The Chases of Blood Brothers
by Good Evening
Summary: Years after Kaname's marriage to Yuuki, Zero compensates for his own supposed failures by torturing him with his own existence, and that he can hardly handle it. Friends die before their times and Zero watches himself deteriorate, blinding Kaname to his own shortcomings. Death, Violence, Z/K, Senri/Takuma T/S, mentioned one-sided Hanabusa/Kaname K/H, Ichiou/Kaname, Rido/Kaname, etc
1. Outside Deadhorse

Zero looked over at Kaname tiredly, his eyes moving sluggishly, colours indiscernible behind a curtain of multi-coloured dots. The man's eyelashes twitched in REM, light lines beneath them revealing how tired he really was. Over the past few months, his schedule had been hectic with riot after riot; reclaiming his power as king was proving to be a hard, dirty fight, and every mud-slinging senator he'd come into contact with, he'd gunned down in his, or Zero's, ways. Needless to say, his stream of opponents had lightly dwindled because of the alleged 'disappearances'. As his friend had put one morning after a hot shower, _"'Disappearing has nothing to do with it. Everybody up in the fucking sticks knows where they are."_ As a pacifist, Kaien had discouraged their nightly, though often daily attempts at removing their obstacles, but as a hunter and caring guardian, gave them the tips on new tech and the old burial sites. Though, often enough, a stack of green was just as inveigling. That or a threat, and they handled threats very well, if not on a _Godfather_ level, a fact in which Kaien revelled.

But as the day wore on and their grim business was slowly finished, the dread of the coming days bit at them, and the amount of blood on their hands saturated their skin, turning their palms a lucid, congealing crimson visible only on the more difficult days. Through their trials, they had come to points at which they thought themselves unfit to be near Yuki, and certainly forbade themselves from touching her, so a light phone call from halfway around the world every two days or so often fought off their urge to rush home and baby her again. Kaname was a ruthless and charming lobbyist: an irresistible force with a gloomy, scrubby youth at his side as a modest show of his 'friendly relations' with the modern [hu]man. Each new base foreshadowed unfamiliar challenges, and their newfound acceptance of each other sprung from a bizarre and sometimes gruesome kinship, every second they spent together fuelling it through witty talk, grim, straightforward analyses, and an almost suicidal bravery and sense of protection. Several occasions set the stage for assassination, one or the other rushing in to back his 'bro'. Four years at it and all they'd gained were some bad scars and an unheard-of tolerance for hard liquor. Disturbingly enough, even though Kaname could heal from anything, at the side of his head had grown a thin streak of white. No matter how many times he'd tried to rip it out, its mesmerizing translucence continued to allude to his suffering, weeks at a time becoming unbearable as he reached a level of maturity and knowledge no man his age should have gotten his gritty fingers on.

Zero's eyes had lost the shimmer of his more meaningful youth, shedding the amethyst chrysalis for a deep violet, a metallic sheen of toxic mercury suggesting his apathy toward horror; his growing savage love of dissonance and the hot, bloated barrel of a smoking gun. Kaname, personally, shivered at the sensation of shorn flesh growing dry on his fingernails, and the sudden evaporation of his history as his instinctual desire for conquer and the illustrious 'chase' overrode whatever morals hadn't yet dripped off of him. More often than not, they'd slough their scars and torment on someone else; Zero would press that round, calescent barrel into the already blistering flesh of his target, the woven metal like magma on their newly branded skin, a smoking design left emblazoned on the stomach or neck like a demonic vigil on cracked leather. Sometimes the putrid rind simply slipped off, in that case calling for a brief, uninterested shrug, followed by a firm, slow walk away, or the introduction of a much more painful side of life, via Kaname's own increasingly practiced skills. The inebriation they faced from the wall of fear and scents of blood forced them to drunkenly embark, and the poor son of a bitch left quaking in their path might run for his life or lay there like a stone.

But now, it was quiet, and as Zero continued to watch his companion sleep in their two-person bag, he noticed how pronounced the streak had become, and surveyed it with a careful, humane doubt that left him barren of his darker inhibitions and usual disinterested demeanour. He had become frightened for this man, having been saved by him, and, on occasion, saving. Never had he become so attached to someone on such a strange level; walk inside a mausoleum and down through the catacombs, and you might find where they would _vacation_, at this point; a pleasant, pre-dead package for a change. Their bloody talent alone set them apart from everyone else, not taking into account the fact that they were the other's predator, and for their own sake pretty much past the fighting point, bickering not having left the picture just for the bitter fun of it.

Long had they been austere in the eyes of the vampire community; widely distrusted by both it and the Hunter's Association. Altogether, they were regarded as a mismatch made in heaven for their brutality and sparking chemistry, along the road having taken on several characteristics Yuki, at this point, would never have permitted in her husband or friend. And Zero could smell on Kaname's and his breaths the no longer isolated product of the wealth of their practised skill in being unconcerned with the lives of the lemmings and sparse foxes they weekly gutted. Huddled in the scrub of some godforsaken tundra on their latest trail, the vein-constricting glamour of hard alcohol had been hard to pass up. In the end, the fire they'd tried to hard to keep going in their intoxicated resolve to quell the frostbite teasing their toes had died quickly without proper tending, their inseparable mass a mesh of heavily scarred tan and liquid porcelain. Kaname's pressured veins bulged fluidly against his skin as his body struggled to keep them warm, the pulsing rivets turning pearl into opal, and their bodies into a recognisable bundle of flesh and an eager, bloodthirsty desire to live.

Zero squirmed on their mat, pushing his body closer to his companion's, shivering in his thermal underwear against to onslaught of an Arctic chill, Kaname's body heat like a furnace positively belching with heat. They were literally at the end of the road, high on the Dalton and stopped outside of Deadhorse. The last days of September seeped away to reveal lessening light and truly Alaskan temperatures, and even Kaname's powers couldn't match up against the glamorous show the coming winter seemed intent on putting up.

Kaname wiggled as Zero twined their legs, feeling smothered not only by the body beside him, but the immense amount of heat that was pouring out of him. His body was capable of doing amazing things, but it was more than struggle to keep such a high core temperature, especially when a purple-eyed parasite was snuggling uncommonly close, the ice surrounding them leeching off of their wavering heat. Not only was he exhausted from this gentleman's courtesy, but he had far underestimated the strength of the alcohol he'd brought, and so his blood boiled thinly beneath the frantically charged surface of his skin, the heat in his face sweltering to such the extent that he removed himself from Zero's grasp, unfortunately ultimately awaking the 'sleeping' man.

"What are you doing?" He asked hoarsely, his voice a dirty croak as the cold seemed to reach even his delicate vocal chords. Kaname, naked, looked behind him at his groggy counterpart, and sullenly slurred,

"M'too hot; need a break. T'seconds, 'kay?" Zero stared at him as his body slowly leaned back and forth, the blood so incredibly thinned, the younger wondered how it was possible the man could keep any temperature.

"I'll join you. Not tired, anyway," he scrambled, tongue loose and swollen dryly in his mouth, for a pair of filthy socks to don his quickly cooling feet. Kaname walked out into a dead night, the stones he stepped on steaming under his unearthly heat. The lichen that had encroached upon the rocks sizzled and contracted from its voluptuous quantity when he neared, becoming destitute piles of scorched, dry weed. Zero fumbled with his clothing and tripped out of the tent to see the whole of his companion, the jutting bones refracting light and turning that celestial body into a true pearl, the gleam of moonlight almost overkill in trying to assist in his prefabricated, divine perfection. His hair was spotted with small droplets of water, the thicker sweat causing his body to shimmer more-so. Zero stood a few appreciative feet behind the nude man, transfixed by the rare sight of the complete, sylphlike form, stripped and lovely in a sense intimated by his soft, lonesome appearance in the daunting vastness of the sunless tundra. The sight was ineffably illuminating.

He began walking from their site, treading toward mountains invisible in the dark horizon, his head thrumming with an immeasurable heat, lips dry and eyes watering from the sweat that wet his onyx brow. Unperturbed by the familiar man so closely inspecting him in his nakedness, he remained at a steady pace, skin hugging his hips and cheekbones in a worrisomely tight fashion. His breaths were like columns of steam in the cold, locomotive body moving effortlessly until the fever grew to a hazardous level, and his vision became clouded by those same dots that had obscured Zero's. They shifted as he moved his eyes and their colour intensified thrillingly, the surrounding light growing faint as Zero came to his side, unknowledgeable of his precarious temperature. Nocturnally, they had left the tent in search of absolutely nothing, a moment that occurred only once in a great while, and often celebrated with heavy drinking, and occasionally, stronger stuffs.

"Zero," Kaname said in dreamy, half-inquiry. He gazed at the nightscape in climactic exhaustion, apathy channelling lethargically through overburdened veins. As his eyes grew quieter of his previous rage, his body suddenly stilled and tensed, then a scintillating aureole grew in his irises, brightening them to the strange scarlet a regrettable, but explicable, many had had known. The umbrageous scene was witness to a vindicating act of dehumanisation, as in seconds, Kaname leapt from Zero's side and bowled over the cold plain, within seconds his companion shadowed him. A lattice of coarse shrubs confined what he knew to be a more terrifying scene than that of their more lucid cases, Kaname's uncharacteristically inelegant bacchanalia further discomposing his state. A brief shriek, followed in suit by a grisly cracking sound, pulled the younger man, of no choice, into the bushes. There, his friend, front slathered with streaks of blood, squat gnawing ravenously on a putrid chuck of traitorous meat, his prey convulsing soundlessly as he was devoured. He looked toward the stunned silhouette with an uncanny hopefulness, until it pulled out a gun and caught him in the temple. The corpse stilled, Zero yanked Kaname off it, and the direful pureblood further losing himself as a dum-dum was loaded into the gun. He fired it with a hardened, but disgusted look on his face, the brunette beside him coming into a stunned reverie at the sound and spray. He looked toward his companion in childish awe as the red faded from his eyes and his mind fulfilled itself. Again, he was sober.

Collecting the pureblood from the ground, the hunter began the brisk walk to camp, but paused in-step to open his pouch. From it, he retrieved a small shell, the façade of an almond hiding explosive intent. Turning a round, he pitched it at the corpse and grabbed his dazed companion's arm, yanking him close to his body and covering delicate ears with his muffs, grinding his palms against his as the brunette tried to keep his curious gaze focused on the small, flying shell. Without a word, Zero tucked the troublesome head into his coat, the shell hitting the body before he could recover and hide his ears from the sound.

Kaname heard it well through the hunting-grade materials from which the muffs had been fabricated. He cried out in pain; the sound of a steel girder crashing to concrete echoing in his head, numbed fingertips shaking wildly. He felt Zero still, and hugged the other man's body in his incalculable fear and dolour. And though he could not see the blaze in the sky, like a great orange nimbus encircling the chasm of Hell, the heat enwrapped their comparably small bodies, their pride quaking piteously before the lambent coruscation, frames frail and tiny against the powerful inferno that was concentrated on such a small deed. Within seconds, it ended.

When the heat left his legs, Kaname unfurled the coat and threw the muffs to the ground staring at Zero frightfully, anger and inquiry growing rapidly. But the man only smiled, and patted his shoulder, "Sun Caps: leaves no bloody evidence, eh?" The very rocks had been incinerated. As the brunette heard the other man talk, though, he noticed the slurred words and uncertain stops, and so, tentatively, said as he stood behind him,

"I don't suppose you have any more of those?" To which the light-haired man did not respond, only continued walking the path, somewhat uneasy on his feet.

Zero couldn't hear.


	2. Whiskey and Tea

A brief morning came and went, and Zero slept through it without visible disturbance. Kaname watched the man as he slept, unwilling to sleep and distressed by the fact that he couldn't wake his companion to talk about it. His body was much cooler now, so he'd brought in their portable heater to keep the hunter warm through the dawn. Still, he couldn't bear much more than his thermal underwear. The heat inside of him and the caloric halo of the blast had almost made him faint, and no matter how much he'd wanted to pry his friend about why he'd done such a thing, there was only one way to ask, and God knew the hunter would distrust him for the rest of their lives if it came to that. Not that the man held him in high regard in the first place, but what they had worked well enough, and being able to stand each other when sober was a good, far cry from the short tempers of their youth.

"You should have slept," the younger said as he woke up, turning onto his belly so he could curl further into the warmth. Kaname looked at him softly, and pushed the heater a little closer,

"Sleep a little longer. I'll be fine." Zero continued rearranging the sleeping bag until he had a large pile around him, then scrutinised it before flipping it over and getting up. The pureblood looked after him worriedly as the man stumbled from their tent, feet black with grime from running barefoot in the night. Whatever he could gather from his dishevelled appearance betrayed the depth of his condition: whenever he turned his head, a painful swishing sounded off in his ear drums, and sleeping had been absolute Hell. The hunter knew his companion had probably figured it out, but retaining a sense of casualness and normality was essential and, for the most part, tantamount to making them feel just a little more civil, especially since he could practically draw a picture in the mire of blood lining the threshold of the pavilion. Not only that, but he could see the sticky tendrils woven throughout Kaname's hair, growing nauseated by the thickness of the congealed clumps.

Face quite pale, he turned to their fire pit, searching through the ashes for leftover coals. Grunting when he found none, he took an all-too-precious match from their kit, and lit a pile of twigs for cooking their breakfast. Or, at least, _his_ breakfast. He didn't know how filling a human shoulder could be, but it was in consideration of their delicate balance that he did not ask, and just brought out an extra cup. What disturbed him the most was, although the gunk had meticulously been cleaned from his teeth, the rotten smell of bad meat still plaguing the brunette's gentle breaths, making it a Herculean task to be near him for more than a few moments.

"If you want coffee, it'll be ready in a moment." He said as his partner lifted the flap. The heavy smell grew stronger and he grimaced from its acrimonious presence. As the man sat down in front of him, a hand motioned up to a serious face, and instantly, his stomach sank.

"You shouldn't be out here if you can't hear." The pureblood slowly mouthed. Zero immediately scowled, almost throwing the pot in his partner's lap,

"I can see and smell fine. And don't talk so slowly: I've been reading lips for years. Give me some fucking credit already." Kaname looked put out, but continued staring at the other man, willing him to look up. He did so sluggishly, not quite fighting it, but doing so for effect, all the while glaring at the other man as fearsomely as he dared. "Don't fuck with me. I can manage myself. When we get back, I'll go to a clinic or something. We're done with this Hellhole, aren't we?" Though gritting his teeth against the hunter's strong attitude, Kaname nodded, standing up to cool off. The taste of rancid flesh was getting to him, but there wasn't good drinking water until the town. So, in rebellion against something he wasn't sure, he grabbed the pot of boiling water and poured it into his mouth, letting it burn off the taste while his friend screamed at him. He spit it out with a challenging glance at the blisteringly angry hunter, wiping foul residue from the side of his mouth. Almost surprised when the man simply cursed and reset the pot, he thought for a moment that loss of hearing had made him docile, but jumped and shouted out when the water lapped at his skin in a large cascade. It scalded, then healed, and he looked up from his ruined clothing to find a reproachful glower and the bent handle of a Sierra kettle. Throwing it to the ground, Zero stormed into the tent to pack up while the pureblood stood outside, sensitive lap still steaming painfully hot.

-

Their overstated return echoed throughout the vampire and hunter communities, the tiresome questions inconveniently coinciding with their after-trip exhaustion and rejuvenated apathy for most life. The man they'd hunted had been a slimy congressman intent on withholding certain rites in the conference room, a heavy bundle of bills flashed at everyone who could dispose of those who could oppose him. He lacked Ichiou's class and Rido's hands-on style, so in the end, it was an easy kill, lacking the flair they'd almost desired in having rid themselves of the other two so spectacularly. Not to say the bloodlust began then, of course.

"So how was Alaska?" Yuki asked them as she poured tea. Lessons from Ruka had given her the discreet edge of a sophisticated woman, and while she was always ready for small talk, she did mean to get to the point. Zero got up after eyeing the tray of sweets on the sideboard, Kaname watching the back of his white shirt as it rumpled and twisted.

"It was beautiful. I do wish we'd had more time to enjoy it before things got hectic, though." The hunter picked through the pastries at the bottom, licking powdered sugar from his fingers as it complicated his fussy quest.

"Do tell," she said, following her husband's eyes and aiming the question at their friend. Zero turned around and they looked back at the table, gentle smiles deceiving the fact that his face was absolutely sheathed in white.

"Well, we camped out on the tundra for a night or two. Not much to do in Deadhorse; but we did find a good place to take you sometime. A nice little bluff a bit south." He sat down next to Kaname, carrying a small plate holding two éclairs. Yuki's eyes shone in predilection, practically devouring them already, and her beloved husband pushed the plate toward her, taking one after. Her violet summer dress moved in pretty waves as she crossed her legs, her male counterpart closing his eyes in relish, the saccharine taste imperative to his recovery from dried fish and, of all things, _vegetables_. He positively lost himself.

"It must be beautiful in winter, but I would like to see it in the summer, perhaps early, so the flowers will come out. Were there many meadows up there, I wonder?" Zero watched her intently, smiling and grabbing another sweet in excited zeal.

"I spied some dead heads and upturned roots, but there won't be any foxglove like the fields in Washington." The mountain trip; five days up in a pass because of a broken axel and a rather irritable pureblood insulted by another one of the hunter's off-hand comments. Although the moonshine probably hadn't helped him much in deciding whether or not it was safe to start joking about how _'Shiki and his boyfriend fooled you pretty damn well for a while, didn't they?'_ Yuki nodded, cheered and somewhat frightened by her husband's almost orgasmic enjoyment of the treats. A champagne bottle rested on the sideboard, and she went to get it to join in with the tea. And they might even be responsible adults, this time.

"So tell me," she said as she again poured their drinks, "was it terribly cold up there, or were you shearing your clothes on the lawn for laughs?" Silly boys. Still unused to abrupt changes in temperature. Not at all like the conveniences of being a more sensitive and lax _female_. Silence answered her, so she asked again, having turned around to spy on their boyish adoration of the sweets to see the back of Zero's head. He didn't answer her, "Zero? Is something wrong?" Still, he was quiet. Kaname smacked his lips on the last bite. Yuki shushed him, and he looked over at his friend, who snapped his head back at them as if he'd been bitten by a snake,

"I'm fine. Simply tired. I'll go doze in the guest room and see if I can't be better off in the morning." Yuki, politely, wished him a good rest. Kaname got up to follow, but as he began to stand, her eyes, focused on her tea, glimmered over the rim of her cup. They told him to sit down and open up, so he sat, and she waited. The porcelain clicked as the hunter's boots clacked at the end of the runner carpet, beyond the hall.

"What happened?" She asked straightforwardly, spooning sugar cubes into her cup,

"Nothing bad, dear. Just a few miscalculations in how much ammunition was required." Her eyes, so like his, imbued with a deep red, gazed upon him with onerous requirement: unavoidably, she demanded the damned truth. "He just got knocked back by a bit of a blast. His head was ringing the whole trip back, and he wouldn't shut up about it. Other than acting spacey and short, he's fine." He got up again, and this time, she let him leave, not bothering to watch as his nervous fingers fumbled the door close.

Instantly, he was at the hunter's unofficial room. Having the door open, he caught the man unaware, limp on the couch. The sagging flesh dripping from his eye sockets carried the message of his sleeplessness and jading vexation. His skin was papery, body seizing when he saw Kaname standing where the door had before been closed.

"What do you want?" He slurred, no longer required to meticulously form words; he'd focused too much in trying to have Yuki think he was fine. God knew she'd find out soon.

"We need to get you to a doctor. At the very least, allow someone to look at your ears—"

"Fuck off," Zero spat, slack form jostling as he thrust his boots on the table. Kaname's face grew hard at his insolence,

"Through thick and thin I've dealt with this attitude, but **you need help**. I'm not going to stand by while you trip over your own two feet trying to spite the world like some obnoxious four year-old." Zero read his lips, mouth slowly turning into an acidic grimace before he looked toward the window, ignoring the fuming pureblood. Then, his head snapped back, and he growled as the man looked down at him like some scolding teacher, "Don't look away. If you can't hear me, I'm at least going to require that you look at me."

"Why can't you just leave? I'm not your _responsibility_ anymore, Kuran." Kaname looked affronted, scowling something fearsome as Zero continued, watching the man stand up and walk over to a night stand to rifle through the drawers, "As I remember, you once called me a 'liability'. So, before I put more of a damper on your oh-so-**glorious** parade, please," he tossed a gun into the brunette's hands, looking at him tiredly, but confidently, "**shoot me**." Immediately, he dropped the gun, the barrel clanging on the hardwood. His skin was burnt where the metal had touched him, and Zero leaned back against the footboard of his bed, hands supporting him, nails tapping on the wood unaffectedly. Ripping a handkerchief from his vest pocket, the brunette wiped the seared flesh from his palms as it grew anew.

"You're a fucking spoilt child and you disgust me," Zero clicked his tongue,

"Oh, and we were on such good terms," he sighed dramatically. Kaname's glare lost no part of its ferocity, but he aimed it at his foul-smelling kerchief, stuffing it back into his pocket with distaste.

"Lose the tone and maybe I'll consider being nicer."

"A pity I can't hear myself. Whatever I'm saying is having quite the effect on you." His impassive look was mischievously punching at the pureblood's buttons, and while the brunette found himself terribly guilty for having caused the man's deafness, what was being said indefinitely dried up his unwilling compassion.

The stalemate they were at was an allusion to their incompatibility: whatever words Kaname might've scrounged up to placate the rogue hunter would be squashed, and any scruples he'd had before that moment would evaporate into an anger that, naturally, could only be matched by this _little boy_.

"I don't feel like dragging you anywhere tonight, so after the sun rises, you and I are heading to a clinic to get you checked out."

"Save it, lover boy: I can handle myself. When something important comes up, I'll go. You should spend some time with your beloved little homemaker. Must be quite proud that you've finally locked her up all to yourself?" He didn't really finish his sentence, but that was pretty much what he was getting at. In the middle of his droll observation of his counterpart's home life, the man had him shoved to the bed, the foot board breaking in two as his body burst through it. His head cracked through the wallpaper and plaster, running painfully into some plasterboard. Without delay, Kaname was atop him. Zero kicked him soundly in the gut, head still reeling when he felt his stomach almost rip in two as the pureblood punched it. He sat up quickly, a great pain thrumming in his belly as he sucker-punched the man, knocking him onto the floor. The scorching feeling in his abdomen grew, and he nearly vomited, it hurt so much. Their huffing filled the room, and Kaname got up, the nasty bruise on his face having conveniently faded, hiding his companion's _extremely _painful strength.

"This isn't going to get us anywhere unless I fight unfairly," the brunette said with a puff, calming down much more quickly,

"Same here. You want a drink?" Apparently, they'd just needed to get rid of some testosterone. The minds of males would forever confuse and sometimes disgust Yuki, whose head had already been described as an artefact of strange origin by both men. Kaname remained on the floor when Zero came over, two glasses of whiskey in his hands,

"Bit of a hard nightcap, isn't it?" he drawled, the right side of his mouth still aching violently. Having anti-vampire weapons touch naked flesh wasn't his idea of a good time, though little was to be said of his rambunctious partner in a pacifistic, if not frightened frame of mind. He downed it with difficulty, finding opening his mouth somewhat of a chore, then reminded himself that, if he wanted to have the pain away, he would have to swallow some home analgesics. But, on the other side of the room, Zero was finding hard liquor did not mix well with an 'upset' stomach. He placed his glass gingerly on the coffee table, stunned as Kaname held his own in the air, demanding more in somewhat of a drunken way.

"If you're so eager to get plastered, go to your own room. I'm not about to have some drunk pureblood sprawled in mine."

"Too late." The brunette said disinterestedly, wiggling the glass childishly. The hunter snatched it with a growl and put it next to his, which was more or less untouched. Kaname covered his eyes from the rough light of the ceiling lamp, the soft fabric of his white shirt cooling his heated face. "That feels so good," he whispered into his arm, knowing selfishly that the other man could not hear him. And, strangely enough, he took pleasure in that: after having suffered weeks alone with this tempestuous person; having a little something over him was proving to be quite the treat, although he knew his complaints shook before the dissenting young male's own lamentations. They took more offence from each other than any villain they'd known, through the years finding necessary the bitter contention that had grown so lavishly between them. It had made them feel alive, and the competitions of their youth failed to give them even the slightest pleasures of their newfound taste for action and, above all, decimation. Nothing had fed their heinous love of brutality greater than the sight of freshly-made carrion. Disputes over who was more deserving of delivering the brands and blows had occurred often. And, if you've ever seen _Saving Private Ryan_, you'll see their resplendent eyes glowing on dirty faces as they handle dog tags as poker cards. No joy was more majestic and sublime than that which came from their work, and in this, nightly, they would rejoice.

Zero flopped down on his lounger, the bed coated with dust and wood shards. If worse came to worst, he would toss the drunk on that, and see how he fared in the evening. Even if there was an extra sofa staring at him as he laid down, he most unequivocally did not want the empty view to be poisoned by _that man's_ face, which, dozing, appeared callow and pale as a young child.

"I wouldn't mind some water," the corpse droned from the corner. His slow-going mind chastised him for insensitively speaking to nothing but his sleeve, but as he got up to finalise his demand, he found the hunter sleeping on the lounger, body tangled as it tried to fit on the short thing. And Kaname didn't know why, but the peaceful sight made him frown and feel quite strange. To see such a dangerous man sleeping so soundly was an odd, if not sickening sight. That face, which was habitually covered in blood or cheap lipstick, so gentle and unimposing in its vulnerability, was a marvellously rare sight, and as he caught himself staring in his stupor, the brunette slowly came to the realisation that the other man had probably felt the same way. Perhaps even Yuki, when she looked upon her 'kind' husband's face, knew of the tragedies he had so apathetically witnessed, and more often than not carried out.

He departed with a stumble, which Zero couldn't hear.


	3. Respect for Doctors

Ineffably, he was going to have to visit the clinic. It was all a matter of hiding just when he did and where he went. For reasons he couldn't quite figure, he just didn't want Kaname interfering, this time. It seemed a reasonable request, but try telling that to the hand pounding on your locked bedroom door at seven in the morning, after what could be called the second worst night of sleep you'd ever had.

Having the door unlock, Kaname entered the room without looking up from his gloves, pulling them on and pulling from them specks of lint until they were an immaculate London grey.

"You need to get up. I don't like being awake at this hour any more than you do, but the clinic's just opened, and I want to get there before the rush." Zero drew the sheets over his head, hiding from the window as the sunglass-clad pureblood pulled back the curtains, "Get up, Zero." He said, squinting through the light and turning back to the bed. When the hunter pulled the thin blankets tighter around himself, murmuring a sleepy

"_Fuck off,_" the brunette twitched, then sprung into action, lifting clothes and shoes from drawers and closets to assemble at his friend's bedside. Taking no time, he ripped the sheets from the tightly-curled body, comfortable enough with his partner's intriguing nudity to not cringe when the several gashes jumped out at him. Trying to ignore the naked beast clutching a pair of cotton socks, he busied himself with which suspenders he would have the man wear. A great crash echoed through the room, and he turned around to see a half-conscious twenty year-old groping a nightstand like a new blind man does a door handle.

"Piece of work," he muttered angrily as he readjusted his readying friend, cringing when the man leaned on him in his birthday suit. Tentatively, a message echoed in the younger's mind,

"_You're doing this on purpose, _aren't_ you_?" Slipping an arm from man's shoulder to pull on some underwear, Zero smirked slyly, gunk crackling lowly from the corners of his eyes as they gradually wrinkled. Hands just about to encircle the man's throat, Kaname restrained himself, still feeling the disgustingly sensuous drag of the other male's thigh against his hip. Almost loathe in giving the hunter any sense of privacy or comfort, he kept inside his head the theoretic action of his smacking the other man in a place that would count, or at least sting for a few minutes. Fantasizing about such things had become a hobby which he regularly indulged in, and did not evaporate the thin spray of social lubricant over their faulty relationship.

"_How drunk did you get last night?_"

"I slept."

He asked the dressing man, causally rearranging the pillows on the couch so Yuki wouldn't get in a tizzy, because the smell of alcohol saturated the pillows and poisoned their threads, making them unbearably tempting as wanton advertisements for drunken fun. And, as a man with the blood of a drinker, Kaname could hold his weight and several others. If it hadn't been for his father and Ichiou, he might not have stood for the taste of whiskey until, in any case, a despairingly more mature later age. Behind him, Zero had finished dressing, and had walked toward the mirror,

"How much time do I have before we get our ride?" He asked, getting out his razor for a cursory shave. The brunette drawled with diminishing patience,

"I'm driving." Which his friend saw in the mirror and, with a pause, turned around to comment, shaving cream covering his five-o'-clock shadow,

"Uh-huh. And how much did _you_ drink last night?" Very close to grumbling, the pureblood waited for his partner to turn around before walking out of view to crack or mutilate something. When the hunter had wiped his face and gotten his coat, they left the house for the pristine Bentley sitting in the driveway. The driver bowed to them and opened the doors as Kaname slid on his sunglasses, their perfect round blackness mirroring the road and the disserving expression on the younger male's face. Then, they shuffled in, and the doors were closed.

Cool air pumped in from the console, the weather conflicting with the brunette's choice in clothes. Though Zero enjoyed looking mildly professional on, at most, formal occasions, he was chagrined by the ridiculously upscale rags his friends had bought him: suspenders should not cost a man four hundred dollars, cheaply, nor should a shirt be any more than two hundred, let alone two thousand. He was aggravated by the fact that they ere too comfortable to give up, and so accepted them as calmly as he could, abominating the idea that he might have succumbed to whatever seductions their ludicrous fortune had set before him. And with the creep sitting next to him, dressed up like some Romanian hit-man, he was less than propitiated.

"Who takes a fucking _Bentley_ to a check-up?" He whispered to the window, not caring in the slightest if his irked friend heard him.

"_Mind your tongue; I didn't sleep well last night and I'm not about to take another of your tantrums well._" Truth be told, Yuki'd had a Hell of a time extracting him from their bedroom floor when she'd woken and found him, passed out at the foot of _her_ side. Picking him up, she'd tried to put him back in bed around five, but he rose on his own and slurred something they couldn't understand. Sniffing him, she'd sent him out in the hall. Ironic that the princess who owned a bloody winery would have to excommunicate her husband from her bed after he'd had 'only a few sips' of whiskey. Having blacked out long before the couple's tiff, Zero had no idea what had been said, but without a doubt, he knew that Kaname had brought him up, and couldn't help but fear what the man had said of their travels. For, if he had divulged to his wife the intimacies and workings of their dynamic, the hunter was unsure she would be able to accept it; every word her husband spewed about peace and protection would seem a cover for a morbid cause glamorised only by the flair and inarguable perfection in which they succeeded each hit. Her head wasn't little anymore, and she know what went down on the bloody front lines, but to know in detail their very primitive inhibitions and primal lusts would be an iron cross on her conscience, and God knew she could shoulder as much guilt as either one of them in her blossomed maturity.

They pulled up to a square, grey building, its front façade slashed with thin strips of windows that spoke of the darkness inside.

"It looks like a dentist's." Zero remarked as he shut the car door. Kaname touched the rim of his glasses, pulling them down to look at the well-kept, but less than stylish joint,

"Dentists are more prone to suicide than any other doctor, you know." He said when the fidgeting hunter looked up. Then, pulling up the dark glass, he began walking toward the institution with a determined, prideful gait, the other walking with wider steps and frustrated hands, revealing his distaste for the grim-looking establishment.

"_Hurry up or you'll be stuck in there for longer_." Twitching, Zero glared at Kaname, who stared straight ahead with an unknown expression. Then, grimacing in his rancorous, introverted tantrum, he slammed his hand on the elevator button, and waited for the contraption to reach them. It flickered for a moment, at last staying on as some bell rung out each passed floor, the tiny vibrations travelling up his fingers and lodging in his brain. As he looked around, distracting himself from his boredom and the otherwise motionless pureblood standing some feet from him, he found there was little decorating the ground floor lobby. A few dingy couches were packed tightly in the southeast corner, a painfully dreary painting invoking a lacklustre lifelessness with its depiction of some scrubby, jagged moor.

The vibrations stopped abruptly, his pores aching as he shook his fingers of the constant, inconsiderable buzz. Kaname stepped into the bare elevator, a single light struggling to illuminate his piqued flesh, casting down upon his face as if they were stuck in some bad horror movie. As Zero entered, he saw to his right a balding, Lilliputian man. In a wheezing, toilsome voice, he spoke, looking ahead of himself as the doors patiently stayed open.

"I see Mr. Kuran has come in for a check-up?"

"Not until the wife demands it." The round little man checked his fingernails,

"So I am to be concerned about this young man?" Zero felt Kaname's aura constrict, and then loosen wantonly in a stressed attempt at restraint.

"Room 908, please." The brunette said in a voice much deeper than usual. The little man sniffed, tapping a long blank plaque on the wall,

"As you wish."

When they exited the elevator, they found themselves in another spacious room, this time decorated in a theme of beiges and burgundy. A long line of chairs sat against the far wall in military perfection, before them a few small coffee tables coated with, not outdated magazines, but small vases, some with flowers, others barren. To the right of the wall was a single door, plain and beige as the floor, sporting an iron knob and a few nasty scratches at the very bottom. Kaname tugged on the hunter's arm to get him moving,

"_You don't have any friends here. I don't want to stay too long_." Zero looked up at the receptionist's desk, a slim redheaded woman sitting behind it. She looked up at him, specifically, scrutinising him emotionlessly as Kaname handed her a small slip, to which she turned her eagle-like attentions.

"There's a forty-second wait. Once you're in, they'll give you a green form to fill out while he goes into the office," she looked pointedly at the silver-haired man, grey eyes distrustful and unwavering, "please wait here until then." The pureblood seemed strained, and looked up at the clock, which seemed to move incredibly slowly, until Zero noticed it didn't appear to be moving at all.

"What does she mean, 'there's a forty-second wait'?" He asked in annoyed confusion. Kaname took off his gloves in the well-heated room, dabbing at his forehead hastily and infliction,

"_This is a hospital for vampires. It runs on the lifespan of nobles. She really means about forty-five minutes._" Feeling the growl in his head, the hunter sat back with a bit of a headache while Kaname occupied himself with routinely crushing his handkerchief.

Almost an hour later, the door clicked and he stood up, gripping his companion's wrist dolorously tightly, and pulled him briskly into what was nothing more than a small, sterile waiting room. Mint paint coated the walls, spindly wires seeping from the ceiling, from which hung large iron cylinders: the light bulbs that might be inside having been removed what seemed like ages before. The rusting metal was still in suspension, only occasionally creaking as if to assert its existence, casting long, thin shadows on the few metal chairs on the right wall. Beyond them were several white doors, all with brass knobs, and all cleaned so as to make them sparkle in the morning light.

A black-haired orderly bowed to them in respect, then beckoned Zero into a room whilst asking Kaname, respectfully, to come with him.

"Computers these days are so unreliable, so I'm afraid all forms must be filled out manually." Walking down a tiny corridor, he led the pureblood to a secluded alcove, secure in its privacy, and sat him down at a small desk where some papers were neatly collected in the centre. "By the time you are done, Mr. Kiriyu should be out and fine." The brunette muttered a 'thank you', and with that, the smaller man left.

The papers were strange; on each of them, the only question was 'Patient's Name' and, while he might have admitted to needing help, after having waved off the orderly, he felt stupid to ask. So, dutifully, he printed Zero's name in the box, and moved to the next paper. But as he relieved the pile of the previous one, he looked down at it to find another box, inked neatly below the name he'd written, showing 'Age'. Slowing down, he replaced the paper, and set to filling in the empty box. After that, 'Sex' appeared beneath his hand, and he wrote a curvy 'M' square in the centre.

At this pace, each box appeared and was filled in succession, until it came to a few questions he was less than comfortable answering: 'Has the patient engaged in sexual intercourse within the past three months?' Remembering discontentedly a night about a month ago, upon which he had discovered reddish, waxen smears on his partner's white shirt, he hastily put a 'yes' in the box, and waited for the next. There was a pause, as if the paper had to rethink the direction of its questions. The somewhat skittish Kaname fidgeted in his seat, glancing at the third-story window beside him as if to check for peeping toms. When he looked down again, in plain black letters stood the monolithic phrase, 'Preference'. Genuinely, he did not know how do answer, and so squirmed again, scooting his chair in closer to the desk until the girth of his coat scratched against the metallic surface of the old desk. The thing creaked impatiently, as if saying, "Well? Get on with it,"

So, as discreetly and naturally as he could, he scrawled in the square a hard 'M/F', and removed his coat with the conspicuous shuffle of grey wool.

-

They were in Reno, in a small, indistinguishable motel on some side street not far from the highway. The edges of the windows were opaque with a thick layer of greenish grime, and the porcelain bowl of the toilet was irreparably cracked. Zero was sitting on the side of his bed, elbows on his knees as he stared through the empty space below Kaname's cot. The thin mattresses creaked aloud easily, they found, and the scanty brass bed posts rattled from loose, rusted screws. Kaname sat in the tall shower, arms, too, on his knees, head bent down in little more than evasive reverie. Their bodies ached and the thick rain battering the windows caused their bones to whine and scrape in the discomforting silence. The brunette shifted and the hunter's ears peaked, head turning toward the door almost behind him. A soft head plummeted to loosely folded knees as clothes rumpled on dry tile,

_Well, now what_?

-

He looked down as the next question emerged from the blue paper, 'Class'.

-

The bedroom was a mess: the coffee table had been chucked through the window, and the splintered wood had crashed into a courtyard below. The mattress was ripped to shreds, springs piercing feathers, embedded in the wall. The door kicked down, the room was silent but for a few grunts as Kaname struggled to hold the hunter down, several bullets pushing from his flesh in slow ejaculation. The younger grunted as he whispered to him, the red fire in his eyes corroding the luminescent amethyst. Words thrummed through his body with the force of some degenerating power as burgundy eyes glared through the blaze. Claws out, he ripped a white-clothed arms and scarred hands, eager with wet lips as bloody tissue sprayed across his face in long, false gashes. The brunette closed his eyes, turning his hands down and wincing as he heard wrists crack backward, a dismembered howl ripping through a tattooed throat. He didn't face the hostile man beneath him, hiding behind his growing hair and breathing as evenly as he could as skin practically dripped from his muscle, through the burst veins staining silvered, slivered bone.

Regrettably, he had known what he was doing, and choked on the resolve that bubbled from his gut in a steady loss of confidence and self-righteousness as he tortured himself for his taunts and misgivings. Provoking something like this was far less than his appraised quality of character, and the liquid fear coating Zero's squirming, animalistic chest streamed obdurately from his fractured jaw, a listless lag proving through the bloody foam on what was left of his lips that his jaw had been broken in their primal tussle. When the body had stilled, he looked up to find a heaving chest and the dangerous smile of a demon hiding in a beautiful boy, and choked when, through the reddish haze, a vibrant spring of purple brewed mockingly, aerated with those dastardly crimson dots until they faded and he found himself too drawn in to keep those shattered wrists down any longer. He struggled again as the beast fought for his mouth, and touched down on the chewed flesh with a triumphant, ghastly grin, as always, savouring the disgusted, frightful cries of the man of whom they had dominated most easily.

-

When he finished the papers, he leaned back in the chair, staring up at the pastel ceiling. The orderly, as if acting on instinct, came instantly and collected the papers with glowing interest, scanning the simple, short answers as if they had been cut from the brain of the greatest man on earth and, in a sense, they might have been. Though, certainly, he was not the most fearsome.

Zero emerged some minutes later, knocking his palm at his head fervently, hearing that horrible swishing sound sway luxuriously in the shells of his ears. Kaname stood, and shook hands with the doctor, who told him the trauma was close to irreversibility, and that certain _hunter weapons_, which he identified with an indignant turn of the chin, were tremendously hazardous, meant to be handled with delicacy and utmost respect. Jaw tight, the hunter quickly made for the door, brushing the stunned doctor's shoulder. But then, his feet stopped, heels clicking as he turned around automatically, bowing low. His teeth grit in humiliation as the doctor looked down at him,

"You really should keep a tighter grip on your _allies_, Sir. It is unthinkable that someone of his level might disrespect you." Visibly pissed, Kaname tightened at the comment and had his friend released, who stumbled for a moment before planting himself on the ground. Slowly, he looked up, and though the doctor dismissed him with a sniff, he continued to glare, as if that helped an ex human in the presence of a Noble.

When they returned to the elevator, it opened for them instantaneously, and within stood the small man from before, hat and coat in arms. The brunette stopped for a moment, pupils shrinking at the sight of his tidy little form. Zero did not hesitate in entering, pulling his companion in alongside him as the man wobbled through a little trance. Then, with grumbling care and attention, he slung the grey coat over lax shoulders, and when the pureblood did awake from his daydream, he handed him his glasses and gloves, which were received with tentative hands. Pausing when he was fully dressed, the elder looked toward the man in the corner, who looked straight back at him with a tiny, toothy smile,

"It is a very busy day for doctors, to-day." When the ride ended, he walked out, turning to the left as the two went to the right and the Bentley beyond the tinted glass entrance. Kaname sat down, and for a time did not speak, head slumped so as to appear unconscious. Unnerved by this trusting, uncharacteristic display, the hunter tucked safely against the window, face marred by streams of sunlight as they made their way through the heavy curtains a doctor needn't prescribe.


	4. Reno

The first part takes place in the past, and the second in the present of the story. Honestly, I've never been to Reno, but friends have, and it doesn't seem like a lovely place. Also, if some things in this story appear atrociously outdated, as the slightly seventies/eighties elements subtly put, they were necessary for my own enjoyment. Modern-day conveniences are too... 'convenient'.

* * *

It had been months since he'd seen Yuki, and his head ached from the bulges of the words he wished to say to her. He paced through the room, hands shaking behind his back as he caught sight of Zero's whiskey flask. Grimacing, he looked down at his trembling fingers, seconds after, walking briskly to it and tipping it nearly to sixty degrees before releasing it from his puckered mouth and wiping the runoff from his chin. Shaking worse than before, he took another chug before screwing on the cap and tossing it on the other man's bed, falling on it with his arm across his face. God, he missed her.

He missed the way her eyes would light up when he brought home a new pet, or how her hair would fall between his fingers like sand when she asked him to braid it. Now, he wondered with vague jealousy whether Zero missed the same. His look troubled, he stared at the door when the hunter emerged from the bathroom, brow up when the towel came from his face,

"What're you staring at?" He sized the man up, from the dishevelled clothes to the brownish stains on an otherwise pristine collar. He groaned at the sight, "Oh, are you _serious_?!" He continued to wipe off his dripping hair, outside the window the clouds curdling the sky with a yellow, grey glow. "That shit isn't cheap, Kuran! Why couldn't you have walked down to the market, or the convenience store, at least?!" Snatching the bottle from the bed, where it rested next to a limp hand, he proceeded to check the contents. Unsatisfied, he grunted, then closed his eyes and poured the remainder down his throat with much more ease than the pureblood, taking the towel to swipe at his lips afterward. Glaring at the brunette, who stared at him almost curiously, and certainly drunkenly, from the bed, he said, "Well you're a bloody mess."

He grappled the soiled collar and tried to yank the shirt from the wilted figure's body, but fingers wrapped around his arm, and tugged him down beside the man, a move to which he responded with a sharp reprimand, and then a grumbling promise not to up and leave once he was set free as the insecure man gazed worriedly at ceiling. The purse on those lips was disconcerting, and though obviously drunk, the man appeared to be in a deep focus. Tentatively, the hunter inched from the body so as to make some comfortable space between them, but the pureblood dug under his back and held his hip in place with such speed, he younger might have feared he claws would come out next. Well, he _might_ have, but he was getting a little tipsy, too, now. Then, from the pursed lips came a halting, scratchy noise greatly unsuited to the dignified man's usual liquid tone,

"D'you think Yuki misses us when we leave?" Zero squinted at the small stain on the ceiling he figured the other was gazing at in such boggling intrigue.

"That's an odd way of putting it, I don't think 'friends' are usually grouped in with 'husbands'." Kaname's frown deepened, and he turned his head to look at his roommate in a conspicuously concentrated look, the concern and envy etched in his encompassing, glossy pupils. He looked as painfully beautiful as his sister, and in his withered loneliness, the hunter couldn't help but envision her face, placed so easily over the brunette male's own. And in this, he found a surreal comfort, which enwrapped him with warmth that even his careful reason could not permeate. However strange, this feeling pulsed familiarly inside of him, and before he knew it, his hand was on the pureblood's cheek, and he saw the man freeze, hearing a lowly humming heart skip a beat before those glass eyes looked to him in bizarre, lonely kinship, and he had little choice but to get up before his impulses took him too far from reality.

But again, his arm was caught, a pair of still-curious, dark eyes gazing up at him as the hand released him, dripping down his sleeve like molten chocolate. Oh God, he _smelled_ her, now; the sweet scents of lemon bars and cocoa seeping into the sheets as Kaname slowly rose from the bed, meeting Zero's faraway eyes with a blur of expectant, brotherly excitement. The hunter's hand came to the side of his skull, and pulled gently at his hair, weaving it with unreal caresses. He dipped his head and came up close to the other man, breaths heavy and weighted with the warm scent of liquor. Forehead resting on a bare shoulder, he listened with utmost care to the quickening pace of his comrade's heart, and decided in a haze that this way or that, the evening would be one of remembrance, and that the mere suggestion of the intimacy he had shared with his wife after those long months was far too much to bear.

The silver-haired man's hand got clumsier as he went further into nostalgia, locked behind the soft flow of drying white sheets, a sunflower hat bobbing humble between their coursing angelic masses. He remembered picking her up on autumn days and tossing her in leaf piles, and felt at his back the gush of the crisp dead foliage, made malleable by the thick barrier of canvas bags. At his collarbone was the lick of a dog he'd known had died, but he gripped its broad shoulders all the same, and pulled it closer with a dazed look, the image conjured before him that of an ill, exhausted, desperate man. A pressure spread over his body, and he saw that the man had laid upon him the length of his supple body, so much like hers, head resting on his breast, hands lost in the sheet.

"I don't think I can take many more trips," he said in that grainy little voice, feeling Zero's cool arms come around his back. They were certainly well-muscled, and through their mass Kaname had a difficult time picturing his wife, though the thing he may have missed most was this _closeness_ with someone. Because after so many months of hunting and killing and hunting and killing and acting as some supreme, unidentifiable being, the intimacy which he had shared with his wife had begun to condense, like bad milk, into particular things that could only be distinguished by physical sensation; the softness of her bejewelled neck; the sharpness of her small hips. In this position atop his friend, he struggled desperately to conjure her image, the futility of this act apparent as masculine arms constricted like an anaconda his, yet, boyish body.

With burgundy eyes he lifted his head and set sight on the hunter, who looked dreamily down at him. He smiled crookedly, a fang prodding his lip whilst the other slipped past. And then the hand that firmly gripped his sides hauled him up the other man's body, pupils tiny and incredibly focused as finger wrapped around his head and he was pulled into a somewhat sloppy, somewhat slow kiss. Unknowing of how to react, he just stopped moving for a second, feeling the alien motions of a large tongue in his mouth, finding it impossible to see his wife in this man. About to call the hunter on his moves, when their lips separated, he opened his mouth and tried to speak, only to feel the sudden jerk as a firm body lifted him up, rubbing against him in a strange fashion. Stalling again, he was shocked to feel those large hands quickly work on his shirt, kissing his neck distractedly, toiling as fast as he could as he felt her image leave him. This moment of shock and dreaming deepened as the brunette felt his shirt unravel at last, a puff of surprise pressed from his chest when the hunter fell upon him. Even though the body atop him was large, heavy, and firm, it was warm, and he closed his eyes as the man burrowed into his hair, fumbling with a thick buckle.

Generally, the clinking would have woken him, or at least stirred the vacuous space in which his scruples might have been. He lifted his hips dazedly, wrapping his arms around a straining neck and thumbing the grim tattoo at its side. The belt flew from his hips in Zero's frustration, making an angry clang on the hardwood. His back arched and his head folded deep into the sheet as his slacks flew off next, the silver-haired man grunting in primeval triumph. Kaname slurred something he couldn't understand, maybe a refusal, maybe just a groan, as he felt his body curl the other way, hips coming off the bed to meet tense thighs. Looking blearily through whatever was clouding his eyes, he met the hunter with a half-grimace, apprehensive as he felt a hand pull him apart, prying with apart with all five fingers the older male's pale buttocks, and leaning back so as to survey his 'prize'. If anything were to end, the moment of truth had already passed, and the most Kaname could now do to remove the other man would be hurtful, and while he was not at all opposed to that, he loathed incredibly the detestable possibility of fracturing the illusion he had set up. A mask for reality so powerful, it was something he could use to distract himself from any horror, even if, when he first started using it, he felt indescribably guilty for having 'tainted' the few precious memories of his wife. Now, it was beginning to become a second language to the devastation he cause, or rather, the realisation that his actions were no better than those who hunted his kind, or worse, that of Zero's bloody stigma. Truthfully, it might be said that he feared tainting his pride more than anything, although he would die for Yuki.

Zero was tender. With women. He was adoring and flexible, and even when he paid them, he didn't force them into anything demeaning. But he knew very well that men could take much, much more, and having not had as much to drink as his friend, was still highly aware of the fact that Kaname was indeed _male_, and not the beauty he'd painted over that anxious face. So, without much warning, he pried a little further, very concentrated, and very mechanical, a stern look on his face as he focused, lips hard against his teeth as he scowled,

_To have it too tight won't do…_

Not that he cared much if the bastard couldn't walk for a few seconds; he just didn't want to get certain parts of him chewed off in the process of making it so. So he flexed his fingers and reached in, delighting in a way he knew was perversely intimate for their relationship in the fact that the brunette's arms had crept over his eyes, a thin mouth showing teeth, opening wide as it dared. Until the man who would claim him couldn't take the once-subtle, but still oblivious seductions the pureblood was using against him, and threw apart the legs clenching him with such force that Kaname cried out. The sound flocculated as he began to fuck the whiny little cunt, growing steadily from a growling bass to halting, tenor gasps, and then stilling in perhaps pain, perhaps confusion, as Zero changed courses and shifted positions. They had an unmitigated desire to keep quiet, though once every few thrusts came the onslaught of the threatening climax, a moment in which Kaname would cover his mouth with his arm, biting the nearly hairless flesh so as to gulp down his volume. And, as he was fucked, he realised that he liked it very much, and when his friend came on his stomach, he thought he didn't.

The hunter didn't give him much room on the bed, so as he got up, yet unfulfilled, to get his clothes, a silver-haired head groaned into the pillow as its body stretched out, the pureblood sticky and stuck in fearsome deliberation. He opened the door to the bathroom and, stalling for a moment, stepped in, closed it, and got in the shower, a little stunned to do anything but turn on the knob, whose correlating flow managed to rouse the sleepy hunter. As the man slowly rose, he slipped on some clothing, sparse on the dilapidated scantling, and sat on the bed with a grim expression. By then, the shower had turned off, and the other male was doing, practically and shockingly, the same thing.

-

Her pretty nails clacked on the desk as she handled the phone, breathing evenly and glancing at the drawn blinds with every passing minute. When the pause broke, she answered what would otherwise be silence.

"Hello… Yes, I'm asking after a Mr. Aidou… I'm a close family friend." The receptionist on the other line responded tidily, but as if she truly had to sift through folders to find the name, and not just click a mouse. Listening to the transfer ring, Yuki sniffled; rubbing her nose with a slim finger, the bone almost ready to catch on her nostril. It stopped remarkably suddenly, and the other line became scratchy and unclear, like a grainy picture of something she couldn't recognise.

"_Are you there?_" It buzzed laboriously,

"It's Yuki Kuran." A pause,

"_Oh. One moment, please._" Then came the true scuffle of manila folders and worn paper. A vicious creak alerted her that the man was most likely rotund, and she clenched her fist, knocking on the sideboard as she waited again. Hissing, the line burst to life with another unearthly unclear confession. "_Hanabusa Aidou, aged twenty-three years, passed away on the twenty-ninth of September._" Her blood stopped in her veins and the world outside stilled and was silenced as she willed it in her stun. In a clear, unbelieving voice, she called out to the man on the line,

"'Passed away'?" The grainy crackle was surreal and left loud in the vacuous silence, her bewilderment echoed by this lucid, dreamlike sound.

"_An undisclosed hunter exterminated him on grounds of suspicion of murder and unfair play. He resisted when offered co-operation, and was shot several times in defence on part of the human._" The voice, like a great messenger come from some strange place, spoke down through her bones until they rattled with panic and she nearly collapsed. The very Metatron speaking to her in this bizarre little universe they had created, and she closed her hand over her mouth in horror,

"Oh my God…" She said quietly, face loose in terror and wonder as her eyes stuck to the lead peaking out above the sill.

"_The report is yet unfinished, but I can connect you to the headquarters of the Hunters' Association for further information on the hunter._" She shook terribly, ready to sob, though too shocked to do much anything but ask and talk and struggle voraciously to get her foot on whatever crevice of sanity and comfort was left to her.

"Were any of his family harmed? How many bullets were found?" papers shuffled once more, and in the same businesslike tone, the man answered,

"_His daughter was maimed, but not mortally. His sister, Tsukiko Aidou, however, resisted restraint, and when brought into custody, attacked another hunter. She was also killed in defence. Nineteen bullets were found in her autopsy," _he halted and she felt his squint vicariously, hanging from his every word. "_There was speculation in Mr. Aidou's case, as he was sitting in his study. Once again, the full report is yet unreleased, but when first interviewed, his hunter confessed to having been unsure under pressure whether his target was a mortal danger._" He paused again, and she listened, "…_Forty-three military grade bullets were found in total_." She was silent. "_… Have a good day, madam._" And with that, he hung up.


	5. The Memorial

Sort of an in-between chapter. Not terribly necessary, but it sets the stage for the upcoming, so-called 'big one'.

... cheers.

* * *

The ride back to the house wasn't particularly eventful, but when they came up the drive, they saw several cars parked in front of the great house, all luxurious, all black. When theirs stopped, they opened their own doors as the chauffeur stepped back with a bow, waiting in this position for the ability to take the car away. Of course, the two of them instantly froze. Zero stood in the driveway, numbly shutting the car door as he imagined the possibilities: had Yuki been assaulted? Was the mansion ransacked? Would he have to play pallbearer for a third time? Kaname disappeared almost the moment he looked at him, the only thing suggesting he'd been there at all being the mangled front door, nearly gutted and splintered. Brought out of his stun, the hunter raced up the steps and into the house, running through the panicked destruction his friend had caused. He came to the parlour, panting, and saw the man holding his weeping wife, the two of them surrounded by similarly depressed people. The relief on the elder's face was out of place in the room, and as Zero entered, he saw that he was, too.

Yuki held her husband tightly, and Kaname looked over at Akatsuki, who cradled Ruka's back with gentleness and sorrow, "They had been catalogued by the Hunters. We don't yet know why." A few distrusting glares were sported by the vampires surrounding the pariah of a hunter, who straightened his stance and walked into the room calmly. The pureblood looked around at them, and then back at his friend with a distressed and not-quite amenable expression,

"I think you should leave, for the moment. We need to sort some things out." At that point, it wouldn't have mattered if Kaname was entirely willing to defend him; the satisfied looks of the Nobles at his exclusion tipped the scale,

"Bullshit." The man looked back at him in shock, stunned by his audacity. Then, he hardened, and with an indeterminable anger, waited for an explanation. Zero went on, "I worked with him, too. I have the right to be here!" Akatsuki interrupted him,

"This isn't the time for 'rights'. We must see to his affairs, now." A random Noble in the crowd spat at him in defence of the blonde's rather delicately-put refusal,

"_Your kind_ is not required here. Now be a good little boy and run along." The look Kaname shot the man was furious and foreboding, so he stepped back into the small crowd with a sheepish, but contented appearance. Several others nodded to his comment, and the hunter blistered,

-

"You know you shouldn't be here." Hanabusa said from across the fire. Zero watched the flame disinterestedly,

"And you know you can't handle this by yourself." The Noble looked displeased, and guarded himself with a dignified disgust,

"Your presence is unnecessary. There is nothing here I can't handle on my own." The hunter stalled, then looked up, and dug through his bag, pulling out a small nutshell. Standing up, much to the blonde's curiosity, he threw the shell into the forest in front of him, covering his ears as a few seconds passed uneventfully. "What a-" A blast echoed past them, a light so incomparably majestic in its intensity, The Noble was forced into silence, an angry buzz in his ear. As it began to fade and his eardrum healed over, he heard the hisses and scurrying of lesser beings, which had probably been soundlessly tracking them for days, frightened by the explosion and scrambling from the scene. The hunter went back to eating, watching his counterpart from the rim of his bowl, a satisfied smirk on his face. Hanabusa sniffed,

"So maybe I underestimated the value of a _pawn_," but no matter how hard he tried to degrade the man sitting before, the telling grin spoke of his immediate failures, and he resigned himself to an aversive silence for the night.

-

Unable to disincline their desire to excommunicate him, Zero flew out the door, banging it loudly behind him, finding himself to be, yet again, the bane of his company. Back in the room, Kaname felt his thin defence of his friend proved he might have the same prejudices. Yuki's quivers resonated inside of him as he clawed at his back, shaking him as he closed his eyes and rested his head on hers, feeling his will and stoicism reel at his weakness, and the tragedy of his close friend's death. Takuma came up behind him, and the little brunette in his arms disjoined from him, allowing them their moment. The blonde's sad green eyes were reddened, and his hands fell to tremors as his oldest friend quickly embraced him, a chin hooking over his shoulder, palms still at his sides as he gave in,

"It almost feels unfair; two down in ten years," Kaname held him tighter as his soft smile faded at the thought of Senri's death, and those green eyes welled up with renewed sorrow as he held his friend back, finding comfort in someone so alike the long-dead boy. Finally, Akatsuki came over and patted his shoulder, and he looked up, wiping at the corners of his eyes as Kaname released him. He hugged the other blonde, who had been trying to restrain his torrential anger and depression,

"Long time no see," he said quietly, almost stunned from his misery by the other man's chokes. The older male had aged noticeably, the sacs under his eyes bulging with his accumulated grief. His pale flesh had yellowed in the long years of his heartache, bones growing brittle, and though nobody would mention it, it appeared that his friends' deaths had infected him with some terrible plague, a river of foul, atrophic puss invading his veins. His emotion-charged disease had sealed his fate in silence, those alive looking on in grim trepidation, though he ignored their pitiful or frightened looks, laughing off his grisly destiny at the best of times, the frailty of his self unreflective in his humour. Akatsuki stroked his back with a warm hand, feeling beneath the black coat a strange, dilapidated frame, so unlike the boy he'd known, heave in his tentative embrace. When they drew apart, he stood still, in awe of the decrepit form, which strutted through an encroaching anaemia to his wife, holding her dearly for a few moments. Nobody wanted to have too much time to reflect on another death, sometimes fearing the illness that had struck the Ichijou, others the weakness of a true breakdown amongst friends and partners.

Yuki tripped toward him through a dreary daze, her mauve dress swishing prettily against her skinny legs as she fumbled her feet. The man caught her some distance between them, and Kaname understood why Takuma had avoided looking at him head-on for, the moment those eyes fell upon the female Kuran's pale face, a blankness overtook him, and he fell into a short, hazy stupor. The woman clung to him for a little while, burying her head in his chest, fingers clutching his coat for support he might one day become unable to give. Her skin was pale like _his_, hair brown and soft like _his_. Her body was smaller, more delicate, fitting awkwardly into a thin black curve, but if he succumbed to his conscious wants, he found himself quite taken in by an obstinate reverie. Should he close his eyes, he was certain two blue ones would stare into him, fingers gripping a satin pillow case as he stretched and woke to the scent of a lavender garden, his nude lover sprawled like a cat at the Tudor windows, gazing silently at early-risen bees, unaware that his companion had awoken.

But he had the misfortune that Yuki looked up at him, teary and a mess like Senri never had been, the fragile illusion of his younger years breaking with ease. If he had any anger left, it would most certainly never find itself at the thought of his friends, but a loathsome dead man, whose actions were left deeply engraved in his memory, and the bodies of those around him. From the young blonde, he had taken two beloved men, and left his mark embossed in the horrid scars which clung to his nephew's body with a withering totality that, at times, acted as a wasting disease.

Akatsuki caught the murmurs and spoke up, "I think we should get down to business, now."

-

Zero had ended up at a brothel, in his wake probably leaving a pile-up or two, if anyone wanted to track him down. His aggression was frightening, but he managed to rein it in as he waited, calming, outside the unmarked doors. He entered with a dark expression on his face, ordering a room and a girl with a gruff voice, his yet unshaved face doing nothing to improve his image. A few passing customers grunted at him, keeping to their private worlds in the small magazine. The Madam pointed to the stairs, unsure and wary of his person, but he stormed past her quickly enough, shuffling up the flight with his fists jammed in his pockets, fingers bending the key to the Bentley waiting outside.

He didn't need sex: some fast, businesslike exchange in a dim room. He was unlike his trench coat-wearing counterparts, who trudged the corridor with upturned collars and greasy hair, or the men in wool suits who would march in with tired expressions after a day's work—or not—contented to fuck whatever soul would allow their release. No, what Zero needed was to relax. He needed something malleable and slender, with a pretty face, no matter if it was slathered in rouge. At a point like this, he might choose to simply dominate something, in lieu of his short-changed masculine assertion in front of a bunch of bloody rich kids. Opening the door, he found someone not at like them; sitting at the vanity with her dainty legs crossed. She brushed her hair, arms moving so her meagre cleavage jiggled, pointed elbows clinking against some terrible bottle of perfume. A whore, by any other means, but he honestly wasn't asking for much.

She acknowledged him with a soft smile, standing up in slippers, green eyes staring at him from a good foot and-a-half below. A sister type with brown hair and a couple of scars, no doubt a caesarean hiding beneath her pink negligee. Her arms wrapped around him and he grabbed her back, crushing her frame into his body so hard, he thought bones might have cracked. She played with his hair haltingly, and then he released her as she walked over to the bed, lying down as he approached.

When all was said and done, he brushed her hair for her, though she didn't ask, and dressed her in something less revealing that she would most certainly strip once the next customer came. The illusion that came on as he stroked her hair lacked the satiation he needed; almost a veneer of comfort spreading on her face as she hummed and tended to her nails, chipped and fragmented, parts still stuck in her john's abdomen. He left shortly thereafter, and nobody asked questions, although it was obvious he'd blown what might have been a day's pay to some others.


	6. Can't Blame Tequila

Well... at least I haven't dropped it... Cheers.

* * *

At the end of the day, a pretty woman didn't seem exactly the release he'd been looking for. The weight of the entire fucking scrutinising vampire world on his shoulders was slowly flipping his switches, turning on each nerve until his annoyance thrummed through his fingertips. He tapped his nails on the arm of a chair, sitting in his room and staring down a vase Yuki'd bought for him. He felt more tense and apprehensive than during the last job with Kaname, whose name, at the moment, brought on an incredible surge of anger so voluminous and potent that it left his arms quaking, jaw chattering, clawing the upholstery until the rich green was left threadbare, spotted with blood from nails broken at the quick. He knew he couldn't take a confrontation with the man without causing some hurt; the damage done to his pride was no longer ignorable. To have someone _just like them_ have to defend him, as if he were some helpless child lost among adults! And he often felt treated as such! The brunette's emasculating display of his image was probably the most harmful thing to their relationship since tequila, and that being the case, it was no surprise the unmentionable man froze the moment he opened the door to Zero's (once again) thrashed room.

The hunter tapped his tattered nails on the distressed arm rest, "So tell me: did you have fun dispersing the bastard's estate?" his voice was smooth and low with the promise of absolute damnation and the wrathful temptation of a positively _nasty_ fight. To his credit, Kaname was a little too off his bearings to handle a pissed, homicidal vampire hunter. He rubbed his eye, placing his black memorial jacket neatly on the back of a chair,

"I didn't come here to baby you. If you're not ready to act like an adult, then I'll leave." In a flash, Zero was leaning against the door. The pureblood looked at him as if he were an apparition, but blamed his sleep deprivation and mournful mind for any tricks of the eyes. If he were fully awake, he might have sensed the unfaltering, terrorising aura with which the other man was filling the room.

"Oh, I can be an adult, now. And, as an adult, I have the right to talk about _certain_ things, correct?"

"Honestly, Zero, I can't handle much right now," he froze again, a firm hand grasping his shoulder, then smoothing a white shirtsleeve more sensually than he was ready for. The man leaned in, lips just below the pale shell of an alert ear,

"Did you know he wanted to fuck you?" Kaname shoved him against the door, turning away and collecting his coat. Zero looked as if he was ready to laugh, and it was at this point that the pureblood fully registered the extent of this _creature's_ antagonism and resentment: the bastard was ready to kill him.

"I'm not going to listen to your trashing of his memory." Again, the exit was blocked, by none other than a very smug, nearly-sociopathic man,

"Hell, I bet he wanted you to fuck him, too. Real slow and deep; though, you might not be comfortable sticking your cock in anything but _her_." He went through the couch and bed, landing on the floor in a mess of springs and fabric. Looking up, he saw the vampire was close to leaving. "Oh don't just walk away!" He got up as the man walked out, and jogged out the door, pointing his gun at a slender, exposed neck. "I just want to talk!" He smiled, cocked it, and just as Kaname was turning, fired it, the bullet flying through an expectant target, which dropped to ground, a gurgling mess of red, white, and black. He then dragged the confused, pained mass back to his room, ignoring Yuki's inquiring calls and the enticing scent of pure blood mixed with fear and carpet cleaner. God, he loved his job.

He locked and sealed the door behind him after plopping his catch on the lounger. He took off the man's shirt and, upon seeing it stained a deep red, removed his own and tied it around a seeping throat, willing the blood to stop a little more in annoyance than preservation. The brunette stared up at him with an exhausted, long-dormant hatred, revived after years of dealing with what could be called petulant child. He frowned in disgust as two naked arms encaged him, a determined, amused face presented to him, a smudge of his blood slowly caking the lower part of a pleased, carnal jaw.

"Just tell me what you want." He croaked, tired of playing sitting duck for some enraged kid. Zero smiled and brought a knee between his captive's legs, delighting in the lengthened abhorrence surfacing in burgundy eyes. So, conversationally, he said,

"Oh, I just want to talk. I need someone to listen to me, right? I need someone to understand me; remember with me; **judge** me;" The couch creaked as he pressed closer, peering into a reviled face, "you're quite good at that, aren't you?" Inhaling, he closed his eyes, softly sliding his finger down Kaname's shoulders, feeling them shake tensely under his hold, "I bet this is the very whorish scent that attracted Hanabusa, you alluring little incubus."

"**Fuck you**." The brunette spat hoarsely. The hunter's back shuddered with an unstable laugh,

"Oh my dear, I know you _would_." He leaned in again, nipping at the wrapping by which he'd dressed that wounded neck, "But we're not here to talk about me. No, let's talk about Hanabusa; a private memorial, if you will." He ravenously devoured the way his thrall stopped shaking, and the dead silence which pursued his teasing voice. Kaname probably knew that, right now, given the chance, this pathetic little human would kill him on the spot. But where was the fun in a simple corpse when the looming and tiresome task of angry sex peeked around the corner? His knee further separated two stoic thighs, which parted as martyrdom dictated they should, all in the hope that their sacrifice might end this pitiful man's tirade. It was one of the most insulting invitations Zero had ever received. So imagine the thrill that came when he delicately closed them with an open palm, all from the horrified and now unsure stillness that washed over the wanton _vampire _when he realised his trump card had failed him. It was purely euphoric.

"He really, really did love you, poor thing. The day I told him I had already taken you was probably one of the best of my life." The pureblood was unquestionably horrified at this point, and looked upon his imprisoning partner with a loathing face so stricken, you might not have seen the true anger. Zero rambled on, pushing his hands up a tight stomach and cupping invisible breasts with rage-drunken lust.

"I assume he wanted to fuck you more than I did; you should have seen the desolation on his face! Nearly killed me after I told him, but I taught him a good enough lesson, nasty fuck that he was." Kaname was terrified of the man's wording,

"I swear to God, if you touched him," the hunter was slightly surprised, but caught himself with a jovial grin,

"Trust me; I only beat the shit out of him. Promise." He held out his little finger, but upon seeing no hand ready to grasp it, instead teased a taut lip with gentle movement, trying to dip in to a closed mouth with little determination. "But that would have been a problem right there:" he looked genuinely thoughtful, "he was feisty enough, but I think he lacked the strength and will when it comes to interesting and dominating you. If he truly wanted to fuck you, he wouldn't have had the balls to do it. I suppose I should be grateful that I was your only _willingly accepted_ man. Don't think you want to talk about childhood mishaps right now, do you?" Kaname had been glaring at him for a while, but paled and fidgeted when rough hands reached behind him and grabbed his buttocks, almost pulling him from the couch. Visions of Ichiou's desk flashed before him, and he lost himself for a moment, letting loose a solitary, damning tremble. Which, naturally, Zero revelled in with a lustful animosity unknown to any beast. He nipped at limp fingers with fanged teeth,

"Remember the last time I was angry with you? Do you remember what happened, Kaname, dear?" The pureblood was wide-eyed in fearful comparison to his captor's ferocity. A hand grabbed his hair and pulled back his head until his throat peaked from the blood cloth covering it, "DO you remember what I did?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to be truly fucked like that again, Kaname-chan?" he pulled harder, eyes growing red through a furious purple haze. "Do you want me to bend you over that table? I'll ride you harder than that old fuck ever did. Or maybe I'll tie you to the bed?" He paused, waiting for a reply, and then quickly picked up the wilted form, which tensed again in his grasp. "Time is of the essence in replying, dear," he said as he dropped the body on the bed. "I have some of those powders I was telling you about. The hallucinogens? I'm sure if I got angry enough, I could make this more of Hell for you than even Rido could have." Kaname struck him almost on reflex; he'd had to bear more than his just amount of insults, but to talk about something like that… to remind him of his very putrid succumbing… if he broke bones, he didn't much care, at this point. But Zero was persistant in his jabs, and held his cheek, speaking with the satyrical articulation of a lobbyist-turned-pundit. "I don't have any chains, but I'm pretty sure I could fashion up a room with all sorts of toys." The pureblood flung him across the room again, but stopped in getting up when he realised the man was right by his side, seemingly unaffected, though he wiped the blood and dust from his facewith a discouraging twitch, "You can't imagine how jealous I was when I heard what he'd done so _expertly_ before I could even fathom the possibilities!" Refusing to look at the other man, the brunette rose and strode to the door,

"I'm going back. We'll talk in the morning." He said as he reached for the knob, hand burning when he touched it. A loud _bang_ sounded out as he crumpled to the floor, dragging his bleeding ankle to his side and staring up at his attacker, panting. He grew quieter as he watched Zero get up, until he faced him with an inquiring look, which soured and became entranced by the calm movements the man presented. Each wave of the arm was like a signal; each step a gong to sound a message. His presence was soundless, but his motions hummed a deep, faraway significance, and as the pain faded from his ankle, Kaname realised what was swimming in the hunter's eyes, which now approached him with controlled, sociopathic inquisition. If bloodlust were borne of something deeper, it had encompassed them, and as the brunette felt his chin gently caressed by bloodstained fingers, he saw in those eyes the unspeakable descent of his friend.

"Kaname," the strange man said softly, eyes a luminescent red, "I really do need you to listen to me, right now. It's crucial that you do." Something sparked in his aura when he felt fear rise in the debilitated man, and he smiled ever-so soothingly and divinely, almost as if to make up for the devilish scarlet in his eyes. The pureblood continued to glare, but his leg twitched, jolting his body as the wound refused to close. He looked down and saw a blackish grime building over the opening, gasping and trying to shove it off with his other heel. His companion stood again, walking to the corner of the room and picking up an intact lamp, placing it on the night table and plugging it in. The light caused his companion to squint and turn away, still convulsing and trying to grope at his oozing foot with awkward hands. The glow made his vision hazy: looking up, seeing nothing but a curious silhouette. He was picked up and set upon the couch, still grasping his ankle and trying to squeeze out the puss—thick and dark, like black bile. Then, the hunter sat down across from him, having to set up a chair and position it. The brunette attempted the same, but nearly screamed when his foot touched anything. Stuttering, he asked

"What the f-fucking **Hell** wu-was in that b-b-b-bullet?" Zero stared at him, eyes losing their haze, until he squinted, and aimed the gun a little higher, cocking it with a surreal dreaminess.


	7. Black Sugar

The last sentence is a tribute to a French film about a female serial killer and her love interest, a gorgeously-endowed blonde woman always shaking behind her. The ending was spectacular, and I could have fanwhored it, but was too busy working on _'Confusion...'_ and others at the time. I wouldn't have been able to do it justice at that level, either, not that I think I could perfect those scenes anymore...

Life isn't life until some cute broad thinks she can trust you, eh?

Naw... [taptaptap] enjoy.

* * *

Hanabusa grabbed his shoulder, turning him around into a quick fist that put him to the ground. The boy pounced him, blue eyes aflame, struggling to rip him apart. Zero pulled out the Bloody Rose and tried to fire it, but a circlet of ice wove around his wrist, encompassing his hand as the metal hit the grass. The blonde glared at him, but wrenched back when the ex human spat in his face. Scrambling on the ground, hand still caught up, the hunter grabbed the gun and fired it three or four times in a rush, trying to catch the bastard before he moved; vampires could be too bloody fast. Almost as if they opened wormholes to get around. One of the bullets hit a white shoulder, another grazing a pulsing temple. The head wound stirred him and he panted as the Noble slowed and leaned against a tree, wheezing with the lake a dim glitter behind him.

"You… you beast." He said, unwilling to approach the other boy in his state. He uneasily eyed the gun, and then covered his face with his right hand, left guarding the wound on his gushing shoulder. The ice disappeared, and Zero rubbed at the chilled flesh, unaware of the similar disgust his peer displayed at the blood creeping down his fingers from the injury on his forehead.

"I think you owe me some fucking answers!" The hunter grit out, the hand holding his gun trembling as he got up, trousers sheared through in some areas. The vampire glared at him,

"Why the **fuck**," he spat, "can I smell him on you?!" The silver-haired boy stilled, pale under the dirt on his face, spittle leaking cleanly down his jaw,

"What?" His trepidation was obvious, the hint of the snarl he'd attempted hanging indistinctly in the vacuum between them. Hanabusa grimaced, digging through his flesh and plucking out the bullet, shortened from contact with crystalline bone.

"I want to know. He won't **look** at you. When he does, there's nothing good. So I want some bloody answers pertaining to the reason I can smell **his blood** in your_**fucking**_veins!" Their skirmish hung in the air with a refreshing novelty; the staleness of the Senate's impending constrictions and Rido's bloody shadow hopping around had become old news—this was the commercial that outshone the Superbowl.

Zero licked his lips, "Got something against your pretty prince being an hors de'oeuvre?" Probably not the best move for the fact that his back would never work the same way, but the bark grating into it served as a nice reminder that he was, at the very least, still alive.

"You PRICK!! You GODDAMNED **DEMON**!!" The grip on his shoulders loosened with the episode, so he slid out of it, and tried to go for his gun again. Hanabusa flung him against another tree, and proceeded to punch him senseless. Fighting back, the ex human got his nails under a white chin, claws extending at the scent of blood, and he ripped it forward with uncanny strength, dislocating it and causing the other to leap back. Crumpling to the base of the trunk, he coughed up whatever he'd eaten, vomit crimson, and he realised he needed to get to the infirmary, or go see someone who had the means to… he needed some bloody help, like, _now_.

"If it's any consolation," he wheezed pertinaciously, "there's no way in Hell I could've ever done it against his will." The Noble stilled as the thought hit him, and the horror that came with it,

"Don't you dare say it" At this, Zero laughed, or choked. Didn't really work out for the better either way, and he clutched his gut as if his organs were about to plop out,

"As some puny beast going up against a fucking pureblood, there's really nothing I can do to force him into anything." His eyes flashed, belly swelling with the laughter he couldn't even painfully conjure, "That is to say, if the bastard wants something, he's going to get it."

"Don't you **dare** suggest that he would fucking _lower himself_ to **your** level!" A single, uncontrollably taunting claw slashed at the prefect's neck, and he smiled as the light wound began to ooze. The blonde's blood was cold.

"Don't tell me you can't smell that. He's **here**," he patted it, "in my blood. And, conceivably so, I've been 'in' him." Ice ran up his entire body, and he gasped as it permeated his skin and searched inside, probing his injuries and poking at his sweetbreads. He cried out when spikes pierced his flesh from the inside, coming out with a fanfare of pants and spray of blood, sticky on the trees surrounding them. Now, Hanabusa's eyes were red.

He stood over the pathetic form as it tried to writhe under his impenetrable ice, pained and confused and… fucking pissed off. That about sums it up.

"He would **never**…"

"Oh, fuck his reserves! The cunt needed it more than you know." Zero croaked as the ice filled him further. Oh, if he died here, he'd haunt this fucker forever. "It's a shame I couldn't be gentle, you know, considering his former experiences were so unpleasant." He was punched again, but he still spoke. It was as if his voice box was the only thing the ice couldn't find, and he knew he could take enough pain to insult the little prat and make his day.

"Die, you fucking _creature_." As the ice pressed into his eye sockets, Zero whispered,

"What? Jealous he didn't sidle up to horny little you first?" And then he screamed. But, to his credit, he screamed something that would help him. A bound, blinded, half-conscious Noble hadn't been what he'd expected that morning over coffee and homework, but it was a nice surprise, in the right mood. So, released, he caught his second… third wind, and kicked the little cunt half to Hell, muttering a few more binds before limping off to the infirmary and struggling not to laugh when he though of what the Night Class would think when Hanabusa hobbled in dazedly, tongue twisted in explanation because of a curse no one had used in hundreds of years simply because it was, well 'juvenile'. That lifted the weight of relying on Kaname Kuran of all people for blood. Coupled with the fact that he was getting laid that week (and how!) made for a fantastic day.

-

"Sugar bullets." Zero said as he absent-mindedly picked up the room, squaring shredded magazines on the corner of a splintered table with an eerie domesticity. Kaname continued to nurse his swollen ankle, flesh dripping off it in crystallising blackish gunk. He pushed it from his foot in revulsion, and it fell to the rug with a squishy thunk.

"Sugar d-d-doesn't f-fucking do th-th-th-this. Hhh-what the f-fucking Hell did y-you shoot me with?!" the hunter looked up, unfazed and terrifying in his out-of-place calmness in the torn up room,

"The by-product," He commented, bending down near the brunette's feet to retrieve the little chunk, "is what Hunter scientists have dubbed 'black sugar' and," he licked it, prompting a repulsed look from the pureblood, "it's nothing more than congealed blood, made perhaps a little prettier by whatever the geeks put into it. Can't imagine what testing must have been like. I mean, they made sure it would work on _purebloods_. Seems as if nothing is safe or stable in your world at the moment," he licked it again with a satisfied expression, and placed it on the table, where it stood and shone like onyx next to the tattered magazines in silent salute. Then, he looked up at the brunette, who glared at him in horror, "Oh, don't be so dramatic, dear! I'm only teasing! They use copies, most of the time. Fabrications of the bloodlines left over from old experiments. Some thrill of the world of twenty years ago. Clone this, that, and all. Absolute failures. Bloody waste of money, too," his conversational skills had long relied on his fractured politeness, offered with a sarcasm that bordered on cruelty and often left his friend in need of a quick shower, sometimes hot, sometimes cold.

He pulled from his pocket a little capsule, which looked to have been prepared that evening (the glisten of some stray gunk lining the plastic spoke of an awful time putting end and end together) and held it over Kaname, resting a hand on the couch. He stood that way for a moment as they looked at each other,

"You kind of need to eat it if you're going to get better. Otherwise, that thing is just going to keep spreading." A bitter 'Fuck you' look came over the pureblood's face, but he took it anyway. The fight was over, for the most part, and he had to be somewhere the next morning. Coughing it down, he relaxed on the couch as the pain subsided and each wound on his body, wherever it was, sealed up, the 'black sugar' burning off and sizzling angrily on the upholstery. He was left in a euphoric state, and his eyelids wavered against the light of the lamp on the end table. Zero stared at him with genuine curiosity, watching as the man struggled to gain his senses, and then finally succumbed to the medicine. With a professionally interested look, the hunter softly held a lax chin, and quietly stated,

"It would be so much easier to do this if we could just find a way to get along." His eyes were glazed over, too. The violet stormed lazily against a cloudy grey, more yielding and inquisitive than the hard sheen that overcame him when he lost control, or otherwise faced his own tweaked little bloodlust. He'd loaded an extra bullet in the barrel of his gun before Kaname had even thought about visiting his room. Knowing from experience his explosive temper could more than damage the other man when going through a rage, he'd popped in a little hollow shaft, slim and sleek, with botanicals and liquid silver swirling in a hazy mixture beneath a glass frame. His chest ached terribly from the wound, but he was otherwise subdued and calm, and found that when he looked upon the brunette's limp form, he didn't much mind it. It didn't disgust or tease him; he didn't feel like hurting anyone… he was so wonderfully relaxed, his body nearly gave up on standing. Leaning down with a lethargic sluggishness, he nuzzled the man's neck, kissing it, and then moved up to a cheek, flush from the pill and dazzling.

Then he frowned: he wasn't used to this contentedness, nor the gentleness that came with it. Not since the famous Kuran [inter]marriage had he felt so at ease. Yuki placating him while he struggled boyishly with emotions and leftover hormones probably was not what Kaname had expected at the prelude to their honeymoon, but the hunter remembered the look the man had given him. Acidic and laced with petty triumph as it had been, it had been calm, as well, and the overall joy of the occasion seemed to make everything okay for the night, and they partied and drank and smoked in the parlour at dawn like they'd seen their fathers and grandfathers do. This calm air of maturity made their cumbrous conversations less potent, and for that early morning, for the first time, it seemed they felt like true men, talking high out of their minds about things they wouldn't have begun to soberly consider and understand. That moment had defined them in the prime of their youth; an intimacy no one else could have shared because no one loved her like they did; hurt her like they had; cherished her like they would. The smoke that curled around their heads and filtered their thoughts had, over the years, become a grimy, hot stench that set their pulses skyrocketing, and they leapt from roofs and the tops of trees, pouncing on prey which shook every time. It had become too late to salvage their serenity, after their relapse into a beastly, primeval state, and as Zero bent his neck a little further, kissing Kaname's lips with the gentleness of a lover, he realised that this thin memento hung even now in the air, lost as it was in the bitter smell of gun smoke and smouldered skin. A lovely memory, their one-night adulthood, had become taboo in the presence of this stench, but remained present all the same, perhaps not as striking or glossy as it had been ten years before.

"I think you're enjoying my vulnerability too much." The hunter snapped out of it, pulling back and facing an odd grin and half-lidded eyes. He flinched when a hand stroked his thigh and the pureblood tried to get up, becoming giddier when he only fell back again and laughed.

I shouldn't have done this to you.

I'm going to make it up to you.

Perhaps we could go to the park, tomorrow, or take Yuki to the carnival?

"I think you should sober up." Vacuous words were more proscribed than insults or caddy remarks in this situation, but it didn't lessen the brunette's smile, and it didn't stop him from dazedly grabbing an unclothed shoulder and pulling it down to kiss the man who could have killed him.

"_I_ think you should join me on this couch." His smile broadened at the thick trail of spittle left between them when they parted, and he lapped it up playfully, high off his rocker. Zero picked him up, nostalgic enough to remind himself not to act like an adult, and plopped the form on the half-destroyed bed, telling it to

"Get some rest or get the fuck out. I need to clean up this mess before Yuki can get her hands on me for it." He tried to walk away, he said in his head, practicing lines and quips and things to say to horny, drugged purebloods to stop their advances. But a hand dragged him back and forced him to sit down, a languid, loose body crawling up his.

"Zero," it whispered, wrapping its arms around him, adjoining fingers grasping clumsily for his attentive cock. He closed his eyes, "we haven't made love in ages." They'd had sex last week, and fucked time and again before that, part of Zero's conscience countered, but he knew the difference between the three, and what his impaired partner was trying to get through to him. Still, waving off his maturity, he made to stand and leave, surprised by the desperation and anxiety which Kaname exuded when he was forced back down, "Please don't leave." Close to scoffing, the hunter sat still for a moment, waiting for some unlikely sign to say he should stop in his bitter tracks and bathe some prick in a naughty mood with affections he didn't want to have to dig up or fabricate. He was too old to play this game, but that message didn't quite reach his libido when the brunette said, quite clearly and loudly to him,

"**Fuck me**."

No adolescent, not-at-all-mature kid in his right mind would refuse that demand. Not that he cared any longer about any one of the handful of caring, lovely nights and days they'd shared. He didn't want to feel so good when someone touched him if her hands weren't the case, or her... head in his lap, eagerly fumbling with his britches and some exhausted words of praise. Kaname wasn't someone he wanted to ever like, and he'd set it years ago that that his uneasiness would stay with him, else that mind-blowing mouth might consume him whole.

"A little deeper, dear. No teasing, tonight." Upon request, the brunette deep-throated him, and he fidgeted, trying to stop himself from coming too early, or thinking this could replace the fantasies he'd had about this moment, minus the capitated body connected to that marvellous head.


	8. Miserable People

Honestly, I think I'm bad at sex scenes. They might be violent because that's where I find solace and protection: some umbrella to hide under to conceal the fact that I might not understand _nice_ sex...

Probably shouldn't have told you that. And, I never do this, but I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed last time. I was absolutely giddy when I found those emails tucked away so much like Valentine's cards in my inbox. It's a lovely, lovely feeling, being appreciated like that!

... well... [slurps down rum n' coke] tell me what you like and what you just can't stand (not that I'll fix anything).

* * *

He sloughed the lazy form off him and pressed it to the bed, ignoring the giggles and then the still quiet that followed. Gently, he stripped the other, dropping clothes shortly over the side of the bed. He leaned over, about to kiss the man when a princely foot met him instead, a challenging, but already satisfied face meeting him over the peak of an exposed knee. He kissed a big toe, moving along the side of the sole, nipping, licking, impossibly fucking flesh with his mouth. Kaname groaned when the tongue laved at his calf, moving along hastily to the top of his knee and up toward a peaked thigh. Zero lifted and spread the legs as he worked, holding them up and suspending them while his arms shook and he reached a stiff cock, a hand excitedly pumping it. He bit the fingers there until they released it, but didn't dare touch the thing himself. He pushed up the man's hips until they sat in his lap, the limbs strewn across his thighs and moving constantly, feet kicking at sheets in slow motion.

"Being so tedious… I thought you said no teasing." The words were clumped and awkward, drawn out into an uncharacteristic drawl at the brunette's convenience. The hunter listened to a constant heart beat, slow and hardly affected; an immortal by any means. He gripped the bottom of the man's spine and dragged his hand slowly downward, widening the pale crease and dipping his fingers inside, grimacing and looking down when they came out glistening.

In a second, he'd shoved his elbow into the bastard's throat and brought his fingers up to inspect them, a muffled mouth trying to question him, confused legs thrashing against him until he shouted,

"Shut up!" Removing his arm from the man's throat, he squinted as he moved his fingers around, the viscous liquid squelching and catching the light with an iridescent shine. He didn't bother smelling it.

A fist cracked down on Kaname's jaw, and the hunter loomed over him, ready to deliver another one,

"**Who fucked you**?" He spat, anger causing his hand to shake, the fist untidy and trembling in earnest. The brunette, beyond the contusions and blood speckling his face, said dreamily,

"What?" and the younger grabbed his chin, ripping him up from the bed, and held him, suspended by a sore mandible.

"You were surrounded by those prissy cunts tonight, and God knows each and every one of you lacks the restraint of a respectable person. So, I want to know just which one of them got some miserable cock" the pureblood jolted as Zero shoved the moist fingers inside of him, parting him deep and wide in wroth emphasis, "**up here**." They prodded him wrathfully, as if searching for the answer inside, though they only coated themselves with more of the question. The man released him then, and he fell back, stunned, still wriggling as the fingers went deeper, eyes widening, fingers unsure if they should start defending him, the drug unravelling his conscience and rattling his voracious lust. The hunter leaned into his neck, back crooked in a beastly crouch as his free hand wrapped around a shuddering neck,

"If you don't tell me," he shoved the fingers in, thumb widening the entrance as it pressed against hot skin, "then I will drag your wife in here and ask her if she knows." Burgundy eyes narrowed and stared at him with a reluctant hatefulness, still woozy from the pill,

"I did **nothing**, and here you are, lecturing me in defence of the most loathsome double-standard you could have conjured." He caught a fist as it came at his face, but pissed off his companion, who gripped him from inside and dragged him forward, catching him off-guard as he gasped and let free the hand that soon grappled his throat, crushing it as the engorged head of the other man's cock bobbed where the fingers were slowly coming out. They played with the pearly liquid again before reaching for his mouth, open from a near-shout that still echoed prospectively in his heaving lungs,

"N-no, Zer-" They plunged in, and he tasted them, bit at them, drew fresh blood which mixed with a congealed mass of old blood, semen, and shit, all pungent on his tongue as he quivered and arched off the bed, back an elegant curve fitting awkwardly, snugly over the hunter's muscular thighs. The silver-haired man immediately drew the fingers to his chest, cradling them as scabs crusted over the numerous punctures, infused with that gritty white. The sight repulsed him, and he looked toward the source of his displeasure, satisfied by the horror that crossed the man's expression. What had he been thinking, those minutes ago? Entrusting such a filthy creature with his care and love… who could have recalled good times between them, a hunter and, apparently, a whore?

"Zero," Kaname huffed, trying to get up on his elbows and have a level conversation. But the held his neck fast, awaiting the tiresome explanation, "it's not"

"-'what I think', right? Trying to convince me this is some misunderstanding?" The pureblood's entrance was already starting to tighten, pulling back from preparation in favour of a more natural, healed state. The hunter's cockhead pressed up closer, and alarm met a predatory face,

"No! It's, it's not… it's complicated. Please. Let me tell you," Zero grinned madly,

"I'm listening right here," he caressed the wet skin, which shivered at his touch as he pried with two fingers, teasing and pushing forth just a centimetre his dry erection. The pureblood closed his eyes and panted, trying to get the words out, "Tell me, Kaname. Whose is it? Who else has fucked you? Was it Kain? He's a man, isn't he? Did he tire of Ruka's babbling and hold you instead? I bet he was big," he laughed humourlessly, "he's a tall fuck, after all. Must have reminded you of Rido, stretching you so wide with that big body-"

"**LISTEN TO ME**, **ZERO**!!!" The man quieted, stunned. "It was Takuma." It was silent. A heartless smile still plagued the younger man's face as he blanked out for a moment. His friend had closed his eyes again, body colder, shivering from the assault between his legs and the cooling fluids that dripped from there. "He looked strange when he held Yuki. He was remembering Shiki. She told me she wanted to try to help him, but I wouldn't have it, so I propositioned him her stead. He was breaking down, so she helped me set up an illusion."

...That blonde fuck, dreamy body poised over Kaname's, half-covered by sheets which had only held the prince and his wife...

"We did it to help him. He's dying!"

... Dipping low and kissing him, thrusting, ravaging him without knowing it, manicured hands holding a back saturated with sweat, finally coming into something that didn't belong to him...

"It's what I did for you when we were in high school," Zero's hand clenched that pale neck more tightly, closing an exhausted windpipe and relishing the pain it was surely causing.

"And where exactly did that lead you?"

Into his bed. **His**, an ex human's bed, and only his bed. Or so he'd dreamed. No one else but for Yuki's sake had the pureblood come so low, going so far as to whore himself out in her place. And in the beginning, it had led him directly to some pest ex human's side. He was the most pathetic self-proclaimed martyr of his time, it seemed, and he'd done it all for her, just like Zero thought he could. And, don't get him wrong; Zero loved her to death—would give his life and anyone else's to her—but Kaname was **his** property. He had been gracious to share him with her in the later years. He never thought it would come to such a pivotal point in the way he thought of her.

A hand lightly, soothingly held his wrist, which continued to shake with the strain of constricting that lovely throat. His eyes were wide, and a burgundy wave blew through him as the other male stared up at him and said his name, quite hoarsely, and more lovingly and frightfully than he wanted to hear,

"Zero,"

He pushed in at that point, face shimmering with cold sweat, eyes alight with animosity and cruel delight sprung from that pitiable vampire's long, painful scream. Senses amplified by drugs, ears ringing, thrusting in harshly. He took Kaname as deep as he could, pace messy with anger and the burgeoning, powerful force of full-fledged arousal batting at his reservations, concealing the fact that anyone could know where they and what they were doing, though everybody probably did. Cracks in plaster and bruised wrists don't really lie.

When he looked down, he saw flesh: a beautiful face that occasionally contorted when he changed his approach, numbing animalistic gratification pulsating from bites left on the legs he held high, bending down to further study that startling form. He pounded the brunette into the sheets with the adrenaline and excitement of a berserk, all but cracking the hip bones bouncing against his tight stomach, mesmerised by their inhuman flexibility and resistance. Above the fear he could sense, ever suppressed by an iron will, a tired resistance, and a suspect expectance, knowing precisely what he would do, and simply waiting to be done with it. Always had he been disconcerted by that intelligence and 'wisdom'. It didn't mean anything if the bastard just sat there and took it. Every time. Dealing with a petulant hunter as if he were the burden of the world! These thoughts contaminated Zero and, likely enough, it was all he could do not to up and kill the pureblood, exhaustive and difficult as that plan seemed.

Kaname, however, was hyperaware of the man's thoughts. Beyond the pain and disgusting sounds of flesh slapping against flesh; beyond the reminiscent images of Rido mounting him, a terrified boy, and pushing him into the sheets with little care for being discovered; beyond the irksome responsibility he felt he had to carry for his friend lay a quiet acceptance of his 'fate', whatever the man would decide it to be. Even if he, once in a great while, found himself fearing this dismal fact, the terror was always shooed away by the comfort of his wife, or the great, strange solace he found in the man's company. His relaxation caved in to reveal affection, which he knew the other male would refuse to acknowledge, not that he really ever attempted to hide what he felt. If it was apparent to others, then surely the man knew. So, in the end, maybe the entire problem was Zero's fault.

Holding in a scream with a small chain of choked "Ah-Ah-Ah"s, the brunette's venture to resign himself just ever-so slightly seemed to be failing. Because it hurt like Hell and he knew the hunter had the stamina of a horse when he was irascible or brooding. His licked his dry lips, waiting for his pants to make them crack again. Every now and then he'd arch, close his eyes, have to let out some sound and pray no one could here him. He was ripping inside, and found that when he thrashed, it only hurt more, but when he didn't, it became to dry so quickly that he nearly yelled out, never mind the fact that he didn't need any help to put this miserable little boy to the ground in less than a second. He didn't quite know why he was putting up with it, but for calling it another onerous disturbance to be chalked up by his damned self-claimed responsibility for someone he wasn't quite sure how to handle.

When Zero at last came, it might have hurt as much as when he first started, had it not been for the blood Kaname had reluctantly eked from his body by squirming. The hunter shouted and pounded as hard as he could before resting, and waiting for the waves to stop, still lodged tightly inside as he finished. The pureblood was already starting to feel nauseous. He tried to speak, but when he did, the deep rumbling in his chest vibrated just slightly his scabbing rectum. But he had to say something. Something to break the silence before it snuffed any explanations or cover-ups they could utilise. He kept thinking, hurriedly processing and trying to keep at bay the stabbing pain he felt when he moved, amplified by the sensational drug. Zero disconnected them, in turn disconnecting his thoughts as he tried to t least babble, lips still frozen, voice box cracking under the pressure. The hunter sat at the edge of the bed, wiped his mouth, and balanced his elbows on his knees, still sweating.

"… I think that was the least violent sex we've had in a while." His voice was like the break of a pause in a movie, when the heroine jumps and spins around to find the killer. Kaname was trying to comprehend what he said, unable to get up just yet. Then he saw those eyes on him, vast, blackish purple depths waiting for a reply or a nod or… something normal. The man turned to face him fully then, leaning over and placing an arm on the other side of his body, staring at him with unbidden self-disgust and a bizarre guilt he'd never thought would be centred on him. Then, with almost grim resolution, Zero bent down and kissed his neck gently, timorously awaiting a cohesive response. He did it again, and again, softly parting his lips in some sort of lame apology for what he'd done. But Kaname had no idea how he was expected to react; he'd only rarely had to deal with this softness in his friend. So, wincing, he sat up, streaking blood and seminal fluid on the sheets as the hunter watched him, brown hair cunningly blocking an inquiring gaze. He glanced at the clock on the wall, which shone a stately _3:00_, and drew the other man back to his neck, holding his back and head like a newborn, tentative hands pulling him in,

"I won't be able to sleep unless you knock me out." He shifted his legs, wincing again in affirmation that, damn it, it wasn't going to stop hurting for the meeting that afternoon. He'd ask about the drug later.

His friend was imbalanced and unsure, but bit down and savoured the shudder with which he was met, becoming greedier and placid as the brunette slumped, minutes passing before he came away and found the man a bruised, bloodied, thoroughly fucked-and-sucked unconscious pile of flesh. Sure, he felt guilty. It was why he pulled up the blanket from the floor, and tried to make the man as comfortable as possible. It was why he cleaned up the room, showered, and left like a bat out of Hell, willing to lay low until the formal funeral. It was why when he faced Takuma next, he didn't fly into a rage and divulge every reason why Kaname belonged to him; was his property. And the brunette found it was why he couldn't get a sight of the bastard until the next mission, even if the sex hadn't been nearly as brutal as other times, which involved cannibalism, among other things. What he later frightfully and achingly realised was the fact that, no matter what, Zero wanted him, and that possessiveness could very well speak for something more hateful. It was all he could dream of that the hunter would affirm this horrific, loving possibility.


	9. Skins

Somebody has to die. Somebody always has to die.

* * *

Takuma stared at Kaname from his wingback chair, pale lips dropped open. His thin hands were limp in his lap, eyes buggy and hazed as he tried to convince himself this was—oh, it had to be—some very, very bad joke. He smiled in his confusion, skeletal fingers bringing nails to translucent palms,

"I don't think I need that sort of help, Kaname," he stalled, trying keep a light conversation, but stunned by the question, "did someone threaten you to put you up to this?" he asked in concern, sceptic of the idea, yet open to anything but the quick-to-come truth. Kaname looked at his coffee thoughtfully,

"I saw you with Yuki," he admitted quietly. The blonde looked shameful for a moment, and hunched over his lap, a hand on his forehead,

"I would never, ever do anything to her, Kaname, I can promise you,"

"But you would with me." Claret eyes gazed at him with iron intention, flashing blue as they drifted back toward the cup. He couldn't bear his indignation, and stood hastily,

"At the very least, I ask that you won't use those tricks on me, Kaname. I'm not some child in need of a therapist. If I wanted so badly to see him again, I'd kill myself." He glowed as he prophesied his scripted fate, so old and practiced in his mind. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sound of someone _listening_ for once, instead of apologising. It was a breathtaking sound. "I just want some peace. I want to enjoy my daughters and love my wife… I don't need any more closure, Kaname." That painful smile; it made Kaname think of himself in that position, never mind he'd probably not have made it to Takuma's age.

The blonde walked toward the door, shoulders a bit slumped, legs light and thin but still managing to drag his feet. His friend caught his sweater, bulky on his tinder frame. He was scared; he knew the man was going to trick him, and that he would probably thank him for it and die soon afterward. He reminded himself that he loved his daughters more than anything right now; even more than Senri. The other man stood up then, taking his hands and holding them as friends do, then touching his forehead with a brown brow.

"Kaname," he breathed as the man began to hold the rest of his body. He pushed back suddenly, strong for his state, and kept his head bent respectfully, "I don't want this. I didn't ask for this. Thank Yuki for me for being so thoughtful," he made the mistake of looking up, green irises swelling as he saw that beautiful man, just as he had been ten years before: coffee hair mussed up, hard blue eyes demanding an answer or affection or anything he would have been wont to give.

"Takuma." Senri said, wiping his friend's eyes, meaningful and intrepid. The man stared down into those beautiful blues, freed from the grip, but staying where he was, all the same. Takuma Ichijou was inarguably stuck, and as his hands hovered over the ghost, he choked, voice thick as he tried to say the man's name before he disappeared. He shook a little, and his hand came to cover his mouth as he convinced himself that this was a prank and entirely Kaname's doing, and that he wanted nothing of the meddling brute. He closed his eyes and stood as straight as he could, and with unimaginable will, tried to break the illusion,

"Kaname, get the Hell out of my house before I have to force you out." It was cool; it was capable; his tone was controlled and only flocculated the smallest amount, but when he opened his eyes, it was still Senri, beautiful and questioning and aloof. Kaname's clothes were large on him, and the coat hid him, large as a circus tent. The blonde pushed it from his shoulders silently, soundless, marvelling. Kaname was too good at this, but he tried not to think about it. He bent down and kissed the other man innocently, lightly, and came away reeling from a scent he hadn't smelled in ten years. It drugged him, and the apprehension dripped away as he bent over again and licked and prodded those realistic lips, feeling arms wrap around him, the bed coming closer as he realised he was the one pushing them toward it. When Senri had plopped down, still staring up at him, hair all over the place, he nearly jumped him, the bait was so fantastic, and had him stripped in a few seconds, inside of him within a few minutes, trousers barely unbuckled before the boy pulled him in with contentious fingers and calculating determination. His eyes blazed a blue inferno always staring insidiously outward, a little wider now as Takuma buried his head in a pale shoulder and thrust continuously, rocking the whole of the bed.

-

Kaname's hands moved anxiously over his friend's back, trying to relax and hold up. It hurt like Hell and the whole thing plucked his nerves like a bloody harp, until the lower half of his body surged forward and he bared his teeth, eyes closed tight to the fact that he was planted on his best friend's lap while the poor fuck rode him like a high school quarterback after a good game. But—he thought, arms now held to the bed, a tongue in his mouth—compared to quarterback sex with Zero, it turned into something of a haven, and he knew the blonde would want him feel good.

-

Takuma glowed, cheeks still wet, but red and lively and tight in a smile as he kissed his lover, hands low on a small back, delighted and playful as they ghosted over the younger man's buttocks, feeling uncharacteristically tentative fingers playing over his own. He was thrilled! He was young again, just eighteen and ready to raise Hell! All he waited for in the world was the moment Senri was out of high school, and then they could be free! It was just a few more years, and everything would be alright, because Rido was dead, and Kaname was taking charge! They had time! They had youth! And they'd be damned before they settled down! Just a few more years; just a diploma away, and they could up and go. He'd envied Kaname and Zero for what they had: so unrestrained and reckless, like cowboys off on some unfathomable odyssey, gone for however long they liked, though he felt the torment both were wont to slough off for the fact the Yuki was always alone. The poor girl! He'd never treated his wife or daughters like that in his life!

Maybe they'd just go out for a little while, do rounds and come back when they pleased, but never be gone long enough to frighten or sadden his wife.

Yeah: all he had to do was await Senri's graduation, and they would be gone.

It would be grand.

-

Kaname panted heavily as the man muttered, surging against him. He moaned guiltily, hair whipping over his head as he turned, back off the sheets, arms quivering as he held up his drenched torso, legs clenched around a firm, healthy back, buckling weakly as he moved the hair from his eyes, trying to focus long enough to keep up the illusion as his second orgasm approached him. Takuma was a damned animal when he was well! If he'd known, maybe he would have called sooner because, well, Zero was more of a monster. He had the scars to prove it but damn it, this was the best, least painful sex he'd had in a while. It just didn't end. And he surrendered himself to that fact as he fell back on the bed, pulling his friend down with him and huffing a tired laugh as the man laughed along with him, and ravished him with the ravaging adoration of a teenaged boy possessed by puberty, the virility of a bull, and the skill of a man in his fifties. Kaname moaned like a goddamned whore, and if he'd ever been one, this moment would have been the proof.

He smiled as he was flipped over, sitting limply in Takuma's lap as the man shifted and started to fuck him more slowly. He balanced on the sheets, and caught his friend in a kiss. The blonde's member glided in and out of him, gentler, more mature as they calmed down and enjoyed the quiet and good health. But he felt dizzy somewhat, and ended up falling on the man, who giggled again and pulled out, climbing over and behind him as he clawed the sheets like a cat in heat, moaning as he was penetrated again, smelling the blood and semen and relishing the feeling of someone not so vicious as Zero inside of him.

-

Takuma blithely rocked, watching with vague awareness the hands clenching the sheets over Senri's pale, hunched back. Somewhat lucid, he slowed more, wondering if the man was in pain. The young man had never complained before, but he supposed it could have been because he was so quiet and detached. He became more loving, softer, and felt skin shudder beneath his fingertips. Chocolate hair stuck to the clammy skin of a pasty neck, and he brushed it off, kissing down the man's spine.

Senri groaned and flexed, and the blonde panted as he fell in a little deeper. He kept a leisurely pace until his libido spiked again, and those hands were forced into fists for just the last thirty seconds before he was finished, and collapsed onto that pretty, slender back.

-

Zero was perched up in a tree, in October, with no coat. A light northern wind buffeted weaker boughs and he watched a lake glimmer about 400 yards away. A wildcat shifted in the bushes and a group of deer grazed near the shore. The mosquitoes were gone and the fireflies tickled his eyes with light, and he wiped his nose against his illuminated breaths and the bitter cold.

Fuck Kaname.

Fuck their arrangement and fuck monogamy. He crossed his arms and leaned against the trunk, boots wriggling the bough and causing the top of the tree to shake, but he didn't look down. You couldn't look down when you were up so high, else you'd never get down.

The moon had grown from a sliver to about three quarters, and balanced atop a short peak to the southeast. It sent a mesmerising glow across the lake, and he looked down, saw the deer, rippling the glittering water as they drank and treaded it. His posture changed: he was observant. He didn't take his eyes off them for a second. The wildcat lurked in the bushes. He felt it readying itself to pounce, and leapt from his branch. His hands caught bark as he descended, popping blisters and ripping off calluses. His boots hit the ground heavily and he ran harder than he'd had to in a while.

The deer scattered at the thumping of his feet, and the cat skittered over the dirt, chasing them. It caught and pinned a young stag, claws deep in a tan back before a pale tank thundered into it. Zero knocked it from the stag easily, and wrestled with it on the shore, getting an arm around its throat and holding it tightly to his battered chest as its body twisted and kicked at him, dragging skin with toes and biting at an arm built strongly as an ox's back. With a mighty _crack_, it went limp on him, and he panted underneath it, eyes dilated, great and red and watching the bleeding mass lying upon him shift as he got up. It rested heavily in his lap, and he ran his fingers through fur coarse with blood and earth. They scaled the animal shakily as his pent-up energy blew through the tips and ripped at the corpse until he was satisfied, and the pelt, well-bloodied sat in his lap, ready for drying.

He lapped the blood on his hands and arms, and stood up, chucking the body into the lake and walking back into the trees. The wet pelt was draped around his shoulders, and he leaned against a tree trunk with an eerie, uncontrollable smile. He wasn't cold anymore. His hands were steady and capable, shining from the moon and eager for the familiar cold of the Bloody Rose. Death was a dream! Death was in his mind, but he was life. He was fire. He was the pride and purity of the stag and the perceptible ferocity of the cat. His was a godly kind, and he stood in the forest with his only two equals as witness, and they treated him with the indifference of their universe. He was unknown by this world. He was beast as it learned cleverness without discrimination.

Fuck Kaname, and fuck the whole goddamned world before he was done.

-

I hate the title. Titles which require more than one or two words, minus particles (or those that do not flow) generally make me uncomfortable. They just sound bulky. If I work up the patience and courage, maybe I'll change it. Not as if many are reading, correct?


	10. Buzzards

Zero didn't come back until late evening of the next day. A menacing air perforated the walls and filled the corridors with a distrustful gloom. He dumped the pelt in his room and fell back on the bed, eyeing the fractured plaster above the headboard and wondering why nobody had fixed it yet. The loneliness gave time for him to be wistful, and he reflected on his options while unconsciously elongating and retracting his nails, tapping them on the bed, thick, thin, thick, thin. When they caught the sheet, he looked down with inspective intent, but found he didn't really care what the Hell they looked like—jagged, yellowed, uneven. They were stronger that way. Made it easier to avoid clean cuts, that way. Kaname always did like some squirming.

He frowned.

The bastard was in a meeting, about now. Not that he cared much for what the dull suit did during their off-time, or if they talked when reunited. Their longstanding relationship provided for the lovely improvisation of a grunt in place of any conversational skills, on his part. Whatever Kaname said never sank in. Not since they were young.

He smiled.

When they were 'young', sex had been lovely. When they were young, they were volatile and always spoke against each other. What he missed most might have been that severe intimacy between them, which had never failed to spark a fight and lead to a couple of minutes of the pureblood genuinely lacking the ability to sit down.

He frowned.

When they were young, the fights had more meaning. They were for love or life or some grand plan for the future: their dreams were caught up in the storm of the age, and a world war which took place beneath the human imagination. Everything was glamorous and sudden, from death to battles and so on. They had been true kings in their youth! Always in some melee, keeping the red tide frothing forth; surging and always satisfying. They fought for their virtuous love and the idea that once this miserable little hunter was dead, Kaname and Yuki would finally have a happy, long life together. But it had gone to Hell the moment the Senate had been broken, and the only battles left were skirmishes and small-time feuds. The thrill and grandeur had dissipated, the blood dripping from their fingers coming from slaughters rather than honourable struggles. They had damned themselves with the middle-age they hadn't subconsciously accepted, and lived day-to-day as though their souls already burned in Hellfire, remorseless in their grungy labours and lustful when the working day closed.

If Yuki had known…

He closed his eyes.

If only he'd told her of their glorious animosity. Should he have allowed himself to become so wretched in her eye, the trine of their relationships might have survived past the point of grim acknowledgement and abysmal reverence. She was beautiful, untouchable, and he thought in his early twenties that Kaname satisfied the part of him which still yearned for her. He was a damned fool, and the only one laughing at him was himself.

He turned on his side, elbow supporting him. He stared intently at the wall, unmoving.

The plans were there. He had everything he needed. His youth and love were gone. Once he was sure everything would be safe, he'd set loose chaos on Kaname's entire goddamned world, and once he was executed, the bastard could start picking up the pieces. He just needed courage, elbow grease, and a bit of demonic charm. Then he would die.

He smiled,

"Maybe this is what love is?"

-

Kaname was terrified. His creamy skin had flushed of colour as if doused with lime, and his wide red eyes reflected his horror. Rido carried him gently, intently, down the halls. His footsteps were clear, echoed like drums in the corridor. Some windows were broken. There were dust piles every few yards. The air was sour with burning flesh and the great inferno of the southern wing. And the footsteps caused the entire place to move.

The little pureblood couldn't budge, and so sat limply in his uncle's arms, curled against a chest covered in his mother's blood, sweeter and heavier than wood smoke.

Rido finally came to an alcove, marked clearly by the influx of paintings and a little, undisturbed lock on the door. He kicked it in for effect, stomping on the memory of his siblings. Like the rest of their love nest, the room was unremarkable. It proved their royalty with lush carpets and overstuffed furniture, book thousands of years old lining well-dusted shelves. The armoire alone looked to be some centuries aged, and the vanity's deep Makassar frame was littered with dainty boxes and dozens of small bottles, mostly crystalline. The bed was magnificent and the sheets unmade. They had risen quickly. The slippers at its sides had been kicked beneath it in their haste. Hers were gold brocade, rabbit fur gushing from the insole. The eldest brother didn't bother with the other pair, but through the splendour and fascination regained his own intensely personal objective, and finally came to _her_ side of the bed.

His nephew found some energy to struggle, and held onto his blood-splattered collar. He forced the boy to the bed and walked toward the vanity, amazed by her collection of scents, looking for the one she had worn the moment she'd died. He heard the boy crying in the background and grinned viciously. He looked at his beautiful face in the mirror and fiddled with her feminine things. Even as a carcass, she had been exquisite.

Kaname stared up at the ceiling, trying to twitch his fingers, to shake the chandelier, at least get off the bed! He prayed to move, and cursed his uncle before he cursed himself. His eyes were wide, pupils like specks, face hot and wetted with tears. The fury and fright were inescapable, and he clung to his last delusion of strength and managed to kick at the sheets before the man rounded on him faster than he could see. A bloodied hand gripped his throat and crushed it, relaxing and drawing back as the beast slowly smiled and calmed,

"It is left unspoken that a hostage be still while in captivity."

The boy couldn't speak, and as that gruesome smile widened and gained ferocity and intent, his mind shook and his body grew colder. Two arms like trunks fell around him, encaging him, the look the man was giving him nauseating him.

Rido flexed his claws and checked them for blemishes,

"Your mother was amazing, nephew, and I could never understand her." He gazed past his hand for a moment with a sick triumph dominating his expression. The boy nearly gagged. He turned back to him,

"Fortunately, she left behind something for me to remember her by. This pitiable little figure, so small, fragile. You're the mirror image of them, and yet so weak," he enjoyed emasculating the prideful boy more than even seeing his brother crumble. For here was the last vestibule of a rival empire, and he could crush it without effort.

"But you have her feistiness," he drew a finger up the length of the boy's britches, claw extending, lifting the shirt and jumper, "and his sense of self-righteousness." He spat. Again, he calmed himself, and that terrible smile bore into his nephew like a stone auger,

"Yet there are some things you do not know you have, sweet nephew, and they were negligible to the naked eye in your _parents_. But I can tell you truths about them you would _never_ have discovered on your own. Truths about **yourself**, and _what you're made of_." He carefully had the sweater tug off, making sure it was folded neatly as he slowly had the buttons undo themselves, punctuated by the ticking clock so that Kaname knew absolutely how much time he had.

"You would do well to listen here, boy, because I am about to give you a very important lesson."

-

Yuki wore a blue sundress of a flimsy material. It flitted about her body nervously and wrenched in the wind until a powerful gust finally outlined the whole of her tiny, pretty frame. She laughed and tried to keep it below her thighs, but it whipped at her hands and Kaname found himself looking around for voyeurs. Zero unloaded the trunk of the jeep and slid his glasses down his nose, looking upon her at first with teasing intention, and then a familiar heat that rose from the pit of his belly up his throat until the only thing he could do was croak. He found himself selfishly thinking that nobody but _he_ should be allowed to see such a thing, and grimaced when the empty ocean glared strongly over the plastic rims of the glasses. Kaname was looking at him carefully, understanding and defensive as the door to the high school warpath cracked open between them. It made him jealously anxious. His fingers twitched.

"Zero? Are you alright?" He asked, reeling in the leash. The man hesitated before looking up,

"Sunlight's just strong. And so is the goddamned—sorry, Yuki—wind." He began walking, and Yuki followed him, rambling. Her husband was shell-shocked. A gritty old fear and protectiveness rose in him, and he followed them with tight lips and squinty eyes; the sunlight was fairly strong. Suddenly, a green shade enveloped him. The hunter was trying to get the blanket on the ground.

"I think the last time I cooked was before we went to Alaska." The older male's anxiety turned into dark fear, and then an unjust hatred.

"Arizona should be easier." His younger paused, slowly wadding up the blanket,

"You didn't tell me anything about Arizona."

"You're a _bachelor_ always on the go. I figured I wouldn't need to warn you much for anything. Not as if you have anyone to care for." Yuki stared at him angrily,

"Kaname! You've no right to speak to him like that!" Zero walked toward him, arm up, eyes slits and voice pleasurably deep. It shook Kaname to the core, and he looked down with expectance from his inch-high throne. The hunter moved in close, grabbing a dishevelled white collar, hoping she couldn't hear him over the wind.

"I'm a _bachelor_ because you're too bloody _envious_ to accept your kept boy might be flirting with some Mrs. Robinson, when the thing you _should_ be worrying about is Mrs. Smith over there."

Zero shimmered. His eyes were dead and challenging. If he cared that he might be close to death, insulting a pureblood in such a way, it didn't show much.

The brunette didn't have an answer. He stood there, dumb and blanched in the wind, his wife looking on at them warily. Then, with youthful vigour and invidious rage, he grabbed his friend's arm and twisted it so that the man screamed. Shortly, a white pain engulfed him, and he was blinded and nauseous, collapsing to the ground as he heard his wife comfort the bastard. She hurt her husband before that cheating, hot-headed, malevolent bastard. Had she heard what the cunt said? His mind spun and his eyes were wide. He heard a body being dragged across the sand. He groped for a foot or a hand, and caught the fleece blanket, curling his fingers in it and trying to stand up.

A car door slammed loudly and an engine started up. More voices came. Yuki wouldn't forgive him: Zero didn't even _like_ him. Somebody tried to hoist him up, but he batted them away. There was more screaming. His hands were wet and sandy. The blanket became heavy and he could only see the vaguest of colours, everything white, the beach an encompassing blizzard with vultures diving down the skyline. He was frightened; forsaken. He loved Yuki, deserved her. She was beautiful and pure, meant for him from her birth. He loved Zero, someone enigmatic and lonesome; a man like a hellhound, smelling of gunpowder and peppermint, tagging bodies with the efficiency of a mortician. If he didn't have them, if they didn't trust him, then what else was for him?

The car left and the screaming didn't stop. His stomach churned until everything turned into a tinnitus ring, the whiteness great and powerful. He was, in the most frightful sense, so very, very alone, and so very, very lost.

* * *

How's about all ya'll Rido fans out there give me some props?

(Me trying to be a proper American)

But really, I'd like to see more of things like that. Nothing screams "my uncle touched me" like a sad, insane man with some control issues. :D


	11. Disownment

I greatly apologise for the wait. Viruses are nasty.

This story should go on for a few more chapters. It's flexible enough that I could have it out longer, or else end it with chance of continuation. The chance of that chance appearing is slim.

Good Evening.

* * *

It was freezing. The latex gloves hugged his sweating skin like a dying man. Dust had been thrown into a flurry, and settled softly like the snow on wooden sills. Sweat poured from him, face was badly scratched, bloody streaks running over his eyebrows; dripping from his purpled jaw. Aged scantling creaked, rusted nails jutting out from the boards daringly as he stepped over them, and the white noise of the river ran beneath his feet. But if he looked down now, it might carry him away.

The door opened, he didn't look up. Kaname's claws retracted, and he stood at the frame with an overworked expression,

"You look like Hell." He said simply.

Zero kept staring at the body, the threadbare cotton shirt and pretty nails, curled on the floor, some caught in the spaces between the boards a few inches away. Her hair, her face… The brunette kept looking at him from the doorway. He saw the fear in her eyes, and the pleas he couldn't comprehend, yet perfectly understood. Both men jumped when he dropped the gun he hadn't used.

"There is nothing we can do to help her, now. We should toss her in the river and leave." In a second, the gun was at his throat, Zero's bloodied, bruised hand mashing him into the doorway. Splinters dug into the back of his head. "Don't take it out on me. I had my own problems."

"**She was **_**twelve**_." The younger man hissed, pushing the gun barrel harder and harder into the pureblood's throat. Skin crackled and withdrew, so that muscle began to creep back, and blood ran down his neck. The hunter's eyes had been blazing the moment she tried to attack him, and God knew it had taken all he had in those few seconds not to bury his teeth in her delicate, childlike neck.

Kaname grabbed his shoulders, and his attacker flinched dangerously, finger precariously twitching the trigger.

"You want me to comfort you?" he pushed the man away, earning a shot to the shin. He swore and leaned back against the frame, only to have his face ground into it. The heat of the barrel sought its way through his clothes and imprinted on his skin. He remembered Ichiou and struggled again, and the splinters in his face bore deeper until they scratched his skull. His sleeves were knotted and he kept squirming unconsciously, trying to escape.

So Zero shot him in the back.

And he swore she heard his scream, because those beautiful green eyes flashed, and her lips quivered pleasantly with the reverberation of his cry.

"DO YOU THINK I SUFFER THIS INDIGNATION JUST TO PLAY WITH YOU?! GOD **DAMN** IT!" He huddled on the floor for a moment before springing up, hearing bullets fired blindly about him. He hammered at the hunter's body until his fists hurt, but because of those damned bullets, he couldn't heal enough to do much more damage.

"**FUCK**!!" He said, falling off the pitiable man, who choked on the floor, retching up blood and what looked like fur. Kaname watched the fiasco for a few seconds before he tilted his head back, winced, and laughed,

"You're so fucking pathetic. What did you eat before you came to her? A rabbit?! God, you make me sick, sometimes…" he giggled as the other man sobbed, "What did you think would happen? Did you think it would be _easy_? Did you think some whelp like you could control yourself?" He was irritated: he had the flesh of a bunch of sick old men stuck beneath his fingernails and a big fucking baby who wouldn't stop crying in the corner. If the idiot could just pull himself together, they could get the fuck out. Just toss her in the river and get the fuck back to the motel, then the airport, and his wife. Sirens blared about twenty blocks away. The metal rooftops made excellent amplifiers, and the sounds of their tussles had probably rung out for a few thousand feet, snow aside.

His hand fell to his side, wrist badly twisted, so he wiped his bloodied brow with the other before looking down and realising _it, too_ was coated.

"Fuck," he whispered, trying to stand up. He hobbled for a moment, and braced himself as the bullets boiled out of his skin and impaled the water some twenty feet below them. He lurched toward his friend and clonked his head with a thin elbow. The man coughed and dropped to the floor. He limped as he dragged both bodies out, hers slung over his shoulder and his held by a coat collar. The ravine was mightier in person, roaring by with a constant, monstrous din, and the whole of the garden shook with its presence and the looming neighbouring train track. The snow had grown very deep, but stopped falling shortly, so that he could see but barely move through the thick powder to the ravine. When he arrived, he sloughed her body painfully off his shoulder, and heard it slide down the bank before catching in some weeds. He closed his eyes, demanding that the river sweep her away, but it didn't, and the bullet still lodged in his weakening shin pulsed with an evil poison throughout his body.

He climbed down the bank as cautiously as a wounded man can, nudging at her body with his foot, willing her to leave. Her blue fleece sweater had bunched around her chest, and her oddly-bent neck was smudged with mud. The sirens were nearing and he grew desperate, kicking at her as if she were some spirit trying crawl out of the river Styx. Her body finally flipped over, and the water began reaching up her legs. It grabbed her and slowly, understandingly, mechanically pulled her in. She floated for a few moments before disappearing under the bridge and shanty. Kaname panted as he watched after her in the pale light, the autumn bank glaring at him with the atrocious starkness of what he had done, its curdled black and brown masses of weeds caught near the surface. His breath turned them hazy, and he began to feel dizzy, until he realised the sirens had passed and Zero was still silent in the garden above him. He shifted, crying out again as he turned himself around to inch up the steep bank. His boots became tangled and the silt filled them so that he couldn't move, water running across his legs.

"_Zero_…" he called out, panicking as he saw the unmoving body some feet above him. The water soaked him and he slid further in. The reeds and grass were tough, and as he grabbed them, their spines split his skin, but he pulled all the same, struggling out of the river, or at least to stay stationary until the hunter woke up. Bracken and muck slid into his vest and his broiling skin baked them so they sizzled hotly, and then burned him in advance upon his life. He pulled harder on the brown weeds, the river reaching the bullet wound and dripping inside, the freezing water causing him to screech in pain the name of the man who couldn't hear him.

All it had to do was reach his knees, and he would be gone. The bank was too steep, at this point, and his feet pushed at the heavy silt until his boots kicked off and rushed down the ravine, so the silt pulled at his socks, instead. He called out again as the water came up his calves and he fell more quickly, its sincere desire for him crawling up his body; the mud in his mouth.

"**FUCKING WAKE UP**!!!" And then his body jolted as he was nearly swept away, a hand grabbing first at his mucky hands; his long wet hair; his bruised shoulders; lastly his pale waist, yanking him from the river with a clumsy desperation that caused him to blanch for a moment before his eyes nearly watered and revealed his mortal fears.

Zero's pants were riddled with horrible coughs, which wracked his body so ferociously he fell from his knees to his hands and clutched at the snow through reddened, callused skin, gloves torn off so his friend wouldn't slip away with them. He didn't bother looking up at Kaname, who was grateful for the other man's pain at the moment, and shivered without discretion, grappling blindly at his own body as if to make sure it was still with him. Silently, he tilted his head back again, and the thanked the Gods for their last-minute rescue, until Zero stopped hacking, and he had to try to act like a man. But his body would not stop shaking, and he obviously couldn't walk to save his life.

The hunter stared at him, still coughing every now and then, mouth a mess with blood and saliva,

"Are you alright to…" Kaname attempted to glare at the ground, nerves frozen and deaf to his wishes. He resigned to shaking his head, and suffered greater indignation when his friends paused, removed his upper clothing, and then wrapped him in a tawny coat. The frost bit at his now-vulnerable skin.

With that, the man picked him up with great effort, and made his way through the snow. The brunette buried his face in green wool and tried to warm himself, huddling so that he became smaller and smaller, feeling heavier and heavier even though he was light as a small girl in the hunter's shaky arms. British Columbia had not been kind to them, and for reasons dissimilar to each other's, they decided to avoid it.

-

Yuki poured a glass of iced tea for him, and compulsively checked the window for her husband. Zero glanced at her as he sipped, shoulder tweaked from when the bastard had grabbed him. He sat up and set the glass on the table, startling her. She looked down at him with pity, then he turned away, scowling. Her hand made to fall upon his back, but she sat across from him instead, smoothing out her skirts on the sofa before settling her hands in her lap and looking up at him, eyes large and commanding. He faced her with little choice, and her words were steady, powerful,

"You can tell me right now why he acted as he did, or I can tell you." Fear came to him, and she inhaled, straightening as he guiltily, submissively shrank from her. It hurt him for some reason to displease her. His voice was gravelly, so he coughed into one of the napkins, crumpling it and playing with it in his lap,

"I assume you know some of the story, already. That being the case, there shouldn't be too much to say." He bent his head in his lap: caught. Red-bloody-handed. Of course she'd known.

Her posture changed, but his eyes were closed. He only heard her shift, delicate lips opening, breath slow and light as she decided what to say to him,

"I have learned over the years that such things are common. There is not really much of a way to predict when or with whom a… spouse" she closed her eyes: this was more than difficult, "may choose to act on such desires," Zero put his head in his hands, shame and anger reeling through him. If she knew—God, she _did_ know—then everything really was going to Hell. Not as if it needed much help from him.

"**Look at me like a bloody man**." She boomed. He didn't flinch, used to the outbursts and mood swings; the shaking rooms and rough, glorious sex. She had bristled, slowly removing the sword from its proverbial sheath, "I've learned that no matter who a person may be, they will always have such filthy inclinations, and I'll be damned if I'm going to take that from my own husband. I love…" she looked scattered for a moment, and her eyes faltered in their venomous gaze at him, looking around the room for a trigger for the right words, "I love both of you dearly, and I'm sickened to know something like this has happened. No, not sickened—yes, sickened, but I've been betrayed. By both of you! How could you… You're men! Proud, proud men! You've never even gotten along!" She looked like she was going to cry, now, and he felt so compelled to hold her his nails punctured the seat to restrain himself from certain death. Red cheeks, puffy, closing eyes,

"I don't expect to be forgiven,"

"Damn straight."

"I will take the blame for this. I wanted to h—" She exploded on him,

"Oh, don't be a fucking martyr, Zero! For God's sake, he's strong enough to fight for himself and you're more important than you think! I know you are! You hated him! Don't try and take the fall,"

"**Listen to me**." He hissed bravely and stilled her for a moment, her curious eyes narrowed and awaiting an answer, "I do hate him. Deeply. My only purpose after helping you was to hurt him. I wanted him to… suffer. More so than he ever had, vainglorious as it seems that I might think myself important enough to him to do so." He paused, pondering rewording, "I know you love him, and I know he can be a good man, but nothing could have compensated for those ten years of absolute Hell." He stared into her desperately, excitedly, the hatred inside of him flushing him and making him giddy. She grew uncomfortable and defensive: his greatest sexual fantasies probably involved maiming her brother.

"I wanted to hurt him the entire time, so I do deserve the blame. I know he's strong, cunning; those don't matter anymore." He smiled like a snake, eyes bright with sickening joy, "Every step I've taken since he walked into my life has been toward cutting him down. Cutting him down and, until you married, winning you. I love you very much, Yuki, and I would never, ever want to hurt you, but I'm sure you understand what I mean when I say I will probably never forgive him and detach myself from him, no matter what I, or you, do." He grew sombre, serious again, realising the impact of what he'd said and how uneasy she was. He licked his lips, "I owe you my _life_. Indubitably. I didn't want to lie to you, even if it meant protecting you." He smiled with a desolate expression that cooled her somewhat, "But I guess he rubbed off on me."

She stared at him, eyes not as wide or furious, but calculating. She had never seen him like this, this shiftiness and obsession, which might as well have rotted him to the core. Should she have attempted to look inside of him and understand on a deeper level what he felt and why he toiled over a goal so vile, she might have rotted, too. He shifted again, and she watched him carefully. Did blood still flow through his veins, or had time etched into his cells the contaminations of his hatred? Had the boy, once turned against her brother, allowed that barbarity to permeate his very marrow? Did wrath become him so? She pitied him, wary as she was, and took it upon herself in her way of martyrdom to try to lubricate the situation as much as possible. Perhaps she wished that he might slide right out of her life. Because at the moment, she would not grant him the kindness she had wanted to give before.

She inhaled, held her breath, and spoke quietly, determinedly, eyes overwhelmingly forceful,

"I can't offer forgiveness to either of you, right now." His eyes were downcast, deep and nearly blue with concentration. The guilt—oh, God, the guilt! He rivalled every Catholic out there with his guilt. She surveyed him, sympathy dried up, "I need to speak with him and then you'll go to Arizona—with help, mind you, and I will receive reports on the operations for once. No more freelancing, no more playing around, no more assuming I'll just sit here, gnawing my nails until your return." She turned her chin up with imperial pride, "I'm not some innocent princess you need to protect, Zero," She looked him dead on, brown eyes encompassing, "and I sorely hope that you may learn to cope with my lack of need for you, now that "Mrs. Smith" is all grown up."

He looked up at her, horrified, and they stared at each other for a minute or two. She was cool, immoveable, and there he was, switched to the sobbing, pervious place of her childhood. He suddenly got the feeling that he'd been left behind, maybe emotionally, maybe mentally. But no matter what, he knew they had lost their comfortable distance from each other; gained a new understanding of each other. Perhaps he wasn't mature enough for her anymore; perhaps her knight's shining armour had tarnished.

He slowly took his coat from the closet and put it on, smoothing the collar and buttoning it military-style so it dug into his muscular neck. She watched him, arms crossed from the doorway in a pose so similar to her husband's he felt nauseous, and had to face the stairs, instead.

"Don't you dare look away from me." He smiled, checking his pockets for his keys,

"I don't have the ego or the audacity to face you, right now," he dropped off, and turned to her, bowing respectfully, shielding his eyes with a firm brow and the cropped sheath of his fringe, "I don't think I'll ever be able to repent for what I've done to you, now and then." She was yet unimpressed,

"Neither shall he." The distant way with which she addressed her brother chilled him, and he stiffened, pulling on some driving gloves and fiddling with his keys. He looked to the front entrance, and at her feet, sombrely lifting his gaze to drift just past her own, stony and trapping. He smiled, cheeks pale, eyes like cave water, they were so deep,

"I'll come back if you call me. Everything in my room belongs to you in some way or another." She weakened a bit, and her arms slackened, staying across her chest uncertainly. She rubbed them, but his search for compassion ended bitterly, and he had turned away before she could answer. "Stay in good health." He said, opening the door and walking out to the garage. She had it close, and went back into the parlour. Sitting down, legs crossed, she looked out the window for witnesses, then hunched her shoulders, buried her head in her hands, and cried.


	12. Resting

Bonsoir, Mesdames et Messieurs! Je mai Voyage à Paris! Il est regrettable que je ne parle pas le français. Ma prononciation est une insulte à la langue! Rude est la pauvre fou qui doit entendre ma voix!

... I got the chance for this trip and,

(hold on. For just a second, put my words into a very serious young Scottish man's voice. He has grabbed your shoulders, green eyes narrow, thin brow furrowed, teeth just visible behind tightened lips. Think of the "I need you to do this for me, man" look. **That** serious.)

... the first that popped into my head was, "I **have** to [date] a French man. Not even that. Just a kiss. Just have him check me out on the street. Unlikely, I know, but I could pull an act, oh _I_ can dress like a woman! Ahh, _Sebastion_, your perfect shoulders and taut stomach are so close...!

After this, It's Antonio Banderas. Oh, and, this story is ending before Chapter 20.

* * *

A hot, blinding wind blew past him, sprays of sand pelting his legs and reaching up to his broad sunglasses. The sun shone with Saharan might, and its glare was mirrored on the white horizon, speckled with sunspots of brush. A guttural hum echoed from the dust-clogged engine behind him. Kaname was desperately, irritably ill, puking his guts out in the dirty rest stop lavatory. Zero closed his eyes and his fingers moved with the grace of a maestro; the bastard's retching was like music. His tank top fluttered too much at his waist, giving him a slender look against the wind, though he too perfectly fit his well-worn steel-toed boots. The wrinkles on his face suited his nasty smile to a tee, and it broadened as his ears again picked up that pitiable sound, which went on unsteadily for some minutes, until he realized with some repulsion just how bad the poor dog's sickness was.

He had turned to incredulously face the door to the lavatory, listening to the endless purging with growing revulsion, when a strong gust nearly blew him over. He spread his feet and tried to spin around, when the engine choked to a stop and the car died. The moment he took his attention from the bluster, it quieted and slowed, as if to accentuate the last ominous sputters of the only car in the desert.

"Shit..." His voice could echo, the place was so dead. Was the sand mocking him?

Silence became austere and unreal; a low, throbbing ringing permeated his ears and caused his fingers to twitch. They were deep, long; all-encompassing, as if to completely strip him of hearing. Already, the explosion had nearly deafened him irreversibly, and he'd wondered sometimes fearfully if his latest shortcoming might endanger him. Perhaps this ringing was the final step toward his dying on the job, something which he had early regarded with a grim presentiment, but about which he felt uneasy and nervous. He stared out at the plane with skittish feet, pants flecked with sand, making small cascades when he moved. At every angle of his vision was sand and endless waste, the slim road meandering away in crooked curves like a sidewinder. His breaths were cold against the heat and cooled his face as the dead wind derided him. Something moved in a brush section about twenty yards away, and he nearly sprinted toward it; animalistic; veins pulsing thickly and strongly against his exhausted skin. But it, if it really was an 'it', didn't move again, and if he couldn't find 'it', then he couldn't kill 'it'.

-

He gripped the toilet, face contorted in pain and soaked with sweat and a thick, bloody mixture, and waited for the last heaves to come. The blue shirt he wore was permanently stained, and he'd already puked on the roadside earlier, making a fine mess of his shoes and trousers. His eyes closed and his stomach churned. He grunted in pain, temples bulging and fingernails cracking the bowl. Fire was bursting through him, as if he were some dragon of another age, the scales on his belly molten and chipping before the fire they held. Upon the absence of the last purges, he looked at his hands, face pale as he watched them shake like those of a dying child's. Waiting a few more moments, he smoothly flushed the toilet and recoiled, falling back on the tile and feeling very small, though his legs had to bend alarmingly to fit around the commode, only to hit the wall some inches after it. He was a disgusting sight, and agonized thoughts, fearful thoughts; fear of persecution and abandonment swept through him.

These attacks, like Zero once had, were getting more and more intense. Before, he'd only feel some bother in his stomach, or a headache, but now his senses screamed in pain and revulsion, body eking out everything he ate hours, or less, after he'd consumed something. Because of this, he hadn't eaten much at all, or slept in case his weakness might increase when he gave in to exhaustion. It seemed absurd for him to have to deal with anything like this: he felt like a teenage girl staying with a boy. He couldn't trust his partner, he knew that, and from now on, Yuki would never trust him. He felt lonely, unaccomplished, useless, and all of these preyed upon him in visions and night terrors, usually in which Ichiou or Rido would come for him, slowly open the flap to their tent or open the car door and simply stand there, silence him with a terrible smile, and fuck him with Zero barely a foot away. It happened before, when he was a boy. He'd feel Ichiou sidle up behind him in the study, his little body bent over the desk, sometimes drugged, sometimes not. Chills caused him to shake as he envisioned the lamp, the silhouette of the chair, the bookcases and pen stands. Hands would massage little hips and draw him close, feigning tenderness as a knee nudged his skinny legs open. He would brace himself at this point, but in some fantasies, as in real life, Ichiou would wait, prey on him and play with his psyche until, at least the first time, he was convinced the man couldn't go much further. Then the nudges became a swift kick, knocking his feet from under him as he lost his balance and an unyielding hand pressed him into the desk. Ink pooled around his cheek, eyes slowly widening as the man unbuttoned himself and let his penis rest on the small of his back. He might lean down then and whisper something torturous in his ear, or play with soft brown hair and tell him he'd be gentle, or that he was tired and might be "unsatisfactory", as he put it. There was no such rest.

"_You're so cold to me usually, I'd ne'er have thought you'd be so warm on the inside_."

Taunting him,

"_So dry, it almost hurts. I'm sure you'll be able to fix that yourself?_"

Making him bleed,

"_I was worried because you never hug me around others, yet here, we're alone and you embrace me so tightly!_"

'Loving' his small body,

"**Sir**_ Kaname's hugs are so wonderful: I could drown in them. Perhaps I should alert Senate members of this wondrous feeling?_"

**Pimping him**, on occasion.

There isn't an abuse in existence he hadn't suffered. Although, no matter how bad it got, memories about Ichiou were only memories. The bastard was dead, and he'd made sure that corpse couldn't rise again. Rido, on the other hand…

Rido was rotting inside of him, rather than in the ground. He had become an intangible metamorphism of all that his nephew feared and the consequential hate inside the boy's mind. He could rear his ugly head whenever he pleased when and make as many new memories with his _beloved nephew_ as he wanted. And he would, until the day Kaname died.

Clearly, the kid was fucked up.

He grasped his head and, quivering, tried to stand. Like a stiff corpse, he rose, fumbling with the lock with a dazed expression and slowly made his way to the sink, only to look into the grimy mirror to see a despicable, illogical man hugging his filthy body as if cold in heat which could put Death Valley to shame. He shook more and reached for the faucet, trying to get the water going. The pipes clunked and a quickening babble began. At first, it spurted out in a dirty jet, wetting him and causing him to grow angry. Then, he felt nauseous, bent over the sink, and clutched his stomach like he'd had food poisoning. He looked in the mirror again, trying to see how pathetic he could become. No sound came from outside, so he assumed Zero was either asleep or listening in. He pushed his hair back, preparing to retch again. It didn't matter if he was heard at this point, did it? It wasn't as if the man's opinion of him was stark and Spartan of any offences. But the quiet was unnerving, real, almost anthropomorphic, and it seeped into the bathroom: he heard it stop at the doorway, and stood still as it waited, then crept in. He imagined it was a carnivorous beast sniffing the air. It was eerie and settled over everything like moss, travelling low over the ground as if a blanket of mist. He closed his eyes as he felt a wind he couldn't hear brush his hair forward prettily. The quiet made him think, almost as if it whispered ideas to him in a soft, toneless voice. Ichiou's lips were on his ear where the wind had been, and he whipped around as quickly as a sick man can, lost in the hallucination, only to feel the consequential, familiar hand run gently up his back, stilling him in terror. He dreaded what he thought would be the coming moments: would they take him right there? With Zero just outside? Then he felt something amazing happen, which made the silence recede and his visions disappear without fuss, almost respectful of the natural din which replaced them. Everything was normal, but he felt… safe. For once. He felt safe, and while not invulnerable, comfortable enough to stand as straight as he could. Cleaning his mouth, he ran the water and washed his face, then strode out the door.

-

Zero met him outside, looking a little off. His hunched shoulders and stiff stance spoke of some distrust, yet his expression was bemused,

"I hope you're not pregnant. It would be terrible for Yuki to find out she's not the _mother_." Kaname made to punch him, but his fist opened like a chrysanthemum and held his belly instead. The fire was lashing his insides again, taking whips to the bottom of his esophagus. His reddened skin was paling quickly, and he made for the car. The hunter looked after him in disbelief, and climbed in alongside him. He fidgeted with his seatbelt and checked the dash for smokes. The brunette continued to hold his stomach, and leaned back on the headrest to seek some comfort. His mouth was a thin line and his free hand nearly ripped through the leather, impatience building exponentially before he finally spat out,

"Must you light the cigarette before you drive?!" A thin paper tube was shoved between his lips and before he could protest, the smouldering tip of another met its end. A hand came to rest on his shoulder, and deep violet eyes were staring across at him, urging him to inhale. He did. Zero drew away and sat back, puffing on his cigarette quietly as the smoke drifted over the door. The sun was beginning to sink behind a rocky mound, and the sky had turned darker. They stared up at the last rays of light, blandly melding and fading into one sea of shading blue. Somehow, the smoke managed to shine like dust even when the light went away, and curled away from them in a stream going south. The silence was companionable, rather than frightening or stressful, and through the pain and paranoia, vexations and exhaustion, they managed to relax, if only for a little while. If their habits and indifferently dodgy lifestyle didn't kill them, then this intimacy might.

Kaname stared across the hood of the car at a couple of distant dunes. His ears picked up tiny claws scratching in the dirt, bodies sidling through holes, brush rustling in almost nonexistent breezes. The desert was perfectly peaceful, the mountains and cities and towns standing far ahead of them, distant, but waiting for them as they rested. Inordinately, he felt a sense of peace and belonging. Here, he sat in companionable silence with his partner: this man who had shot him and fucked him and protected his and his wife's life. Problems flitted only faintly on the horizon, far-off and only technically important. Pain, though always present, subsided a little while his thoughtfulness consumed him. As he remembered, he had only ever achieved this sort of moment with Yuki. Her final words to him before the trip were nonexistent. No 'goodbye's or 'come back soon's or 'I love you's. She had barely looked at him, kept her chin high, and told him in a delicate encounter on the patio just what level of Hell he was going to. Of course, he was heartbroken, downtrodden, but this seemed to have manifested itself in physical pain rather than mental self-torture. Had he garnered the courage to speak more than sappy, apologetic words to her (common and useless to the type of woman she'd become) he might have salvaged more of their relationship and eventually succumbed to the fact that _this sort of thing_ does happen in vampire relationships. Regardless of the devotion and love two might have for each other, five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand years is an awfully long time to stay monogamous. Or, in what would hve been his case, **celibate**.

As he justified his actions with wholehearted attempts at gluing back together his masculine pride, Zero mused in the driver's seat, a frown on his face, more relaxed than the pureblood, less intense, and yet somehow more foreboding. He didn't really direct his thoughts so much as drifted. His calculations were hazy in his head, and distractions came easily. He lacked Kaname's determination in making himself feel better, and didn't even attempt redemption. Whatever penance he knew his friend must've been cooking up should only look desperate and stupid to an outside eye, and he mourned for a second or two in another distraction the fact that the brunette seemed to have lost his very dignity. Zero knew he'd fucked up. Pretty damn badly, if he could say so himself (without furthering the other man's quest for a medicine to their situation). He knew there was nothing he could do to save himself in Yuki's opinion, so he never intended to try. To do other than that could only prove he was a fool, and he'd damned three times over if he was going to lower himself any more in her eyes.

And, he didn't give it much thought, frankly because he felt so terribly hopeless after hurting her so carelessly, but just what he was doing could probably raise her opinion of him more than he would have imagined. Acknowledgement of his shortcomings, the fact that her resolve was beyond him, and that what he had done with her husband was completely unforgiveable, and then just stopping the train of thought before it sought penance was a wise thing to do. And here, he did think a little. Of how much respect he had for her, and how much he still loved her. How he would easily kill Kaname if it meant saving her, and the endless fantasies he'd had about that exact situation. One of which made him smile:

He and Kaname would be making love. The pureblood, in his possessiveness and cruelty, would have locked her away as Shizuka had been, and the only two with whom she'd communicate would be he and the hunter, himself. She'd have told him of her husband's cruelty and harshness: of the abuses she'd been put through and how, at the moment Zero stood over Rido's mangled, broken corpse, should have commanded him to run that pretty blade right through her brother's Grinch heart. He would follow her order there, in the bedroom, as Kaname claimed love for him. He'd bury the blade on the man's throat and dig into his chest case as if searching through a trunk for that tiny heart, and yank it out with triumph. And in the hours following, he would stare into those sorrowful, stricken eyes with contempt and conquest, and continue to 'make love' until that smirking son of a bitch finally breathed his last and sighed out whatever words had come to mind in that poisonous voice of his. It was an old fantasy, from when they'd first started fucking.

He looked at the dune his friend stared so purposefully at, and wondered at the beautiful, subtle curves, pinkish as the sun began to dip lower in the sky, falling behind a windswept mound. He felt mortality, and then déjà vu. Was this moment something significant? He couldn't tell. He wanted to ask questions suddenly. The approaching darkness seemed to fuel his desire, like that of the convict approaching the firing wall. He needed to speak.

"Did Aidou ever drop you any hints?" There was a chill. Kaname looked at him seriously,

"... Yes." For some reason, he felt surprised,

"Did you ever do anything about it?"

Silence shadowed him. The brunette took a drag on the cigarette, now mostly ash, hanging from his teeth. He held out his hand and looked at it as if it was mechanical: something to be explained rather than felt. The reaction told Zero there was something beyond his and Yuki's stake in the man, and this inflamed him.

"... He placed his hand... on the desk, near mine. We were talking about something that seemed important at the time. He kept... looking at it. I felt as though he wanted to touch me, so I was wary, but now that I think back on it, I should have let him." He had been sombre before, but time itself pained him, now, "His looks were different from the others'; different from Yuki's, even. There was no physical hunger, but craving. Whatever I wanted from Yuki, I had to coax out, but it all came so easily from him. Lust was inevitable, but I did consider, after my uncle, what we might have made of each other had I given in to him, rather than you."

"So I'm replaceable." Zero was sceptic. Not panicked, because he knew he certainly wasn't replaceable in Kaname's eyes, but of the speculative relationship between the dead man and the one left alive.

"No. You're the only one left I can talk to. Aidou is dead and Takuma has gone insane since I tried to help him." His tone became more subdued, until his wretchedness caused his head to lower, "That mistake reminds me that whatever I might have made of Aidou wouldn't have been good. At the very least, he managed to have a daughter to carry on his lineage, now that his sisters have left the house. With me there could only have been grief and this horrid lifestyle." Zero's eyebrows went up and he pouted a bit,

"It's not that bad. Better than staying in the office, I think you once said." The sun had sunken completely, and the earlier rays died before twilight. It wasn't too cold, but the roof, sitting in the trunk, was likely to come in handy.

"This life of ours I've made, I wonder when it'll kill us?" Zero threw his cig over the door and lit another one,

"I don't think you can rightfully take all credit," he puffed, "God knows, I've had more of a hand in the creation of this Hellhole of a life than you think."

Kaname looked at him, head laying depressed on the dash,

"Pray tell."


	13. The Sickness

... I feel dissatisfied with this story at the moment. I won't stop without finishing, and I'm not getting writer's block, it's just that all outcomes involving death (a personal pastime) seem bland. I've been spoiled by my own designs. If this goes on, God forbid, I might end up with more optimistic inclinations. Somebody convince me that there is no way one or the other of them could possibly care for his counterpart. I'd die twice over if _more than one_ of them ended up happy... one is difficult to start with, ah?

Anyway, don't let my Spring-fuelled cheer ruin your day. Be as cynical as you need to be. Sit on the sidelines laugh at people when they're maimed, or when a plane crashes into an institute for malnourished orphans hard of hearing. Punish children the old-fashioned Catholic way. Criticize religions without truly caring for the cause. Find your partner listless and cheat on them, and go home and have them wash the cologne out of your shirt.

Go ahead._ Have a _**blast**. I'll be sittin' here with some gin, just waitin' for you to stroll in with that precocious, self-satisfied smile on your face, and drink and bask in the pretense you've established. And then I'll tell you just what I think of what you had the balls to go out and bloody _do_.

... Sorry. Working on another story in my head, an original involving a largely 'old pals' type of a relationship.

* * *

His chest pounded and he choked on his breath. Covered in sweat, he lay twisted in the comforter, claws dug deeply into the mattress. Shaking fingers came to his forehead, patting it and brushing hair back nervously. His legs bent automatically, begging to go into the foetal position, but he closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply. The curtains stood dead still in front of the window, a crack of greyish light seeping through. The sound of a gale calmed him, and he tried to relax and forget the dream, but whenever he took his eyes from the lighted corner of the bedroom, the shadows seemed to sweep in and try to consume him. He finally shifted and swung his legs over the side, dragging a blanket up with him to watch the storm.

When he got to the window, he pressed his clammy forehead to the glass and breathed again, sighing and then holding breaths for sometimes a few minutes before letting them out. When his eyes closed, he could almost feel the eerie dark creep over his toes, ethereal and soft, like a thousand tarantulas crawling and pushing against each other. So he sat on the sill, lifted his feet, and pulled the sash to bring the drapes back, marvelling at the monstrous gusts pummelling the grounds and forest. He looked down at a walkway and spotted students trying to walk through the wind. Upon seeing Yuki off in the distance, he blanched, remembering the dream, but before he could pull the sash forward, saw Zero jogging to her side, and hallucinations hit him full blast.

His feet become planted on the floor. He is staring at a picture of his parents. They stand proudly with gentle smiles, cuddling his tiny sepia body in its long Baptismal gown. A hand comes over his shoulder as he's imagining them, and grabs him tightly, Rido's cocked sleeping shirt brushing against him. He can't move for fear, and feels the fingers relax and tap in a line as the man yawns, pulling back tangled, feather-laden hair. Alcohol permeates the very walls and that sweaty body stinks of testosterone. Kaname is surprised that the man can walk straight. Rido is surprised that Kaname can walk at all.

That deep voice curdles like warm milk in the suffocating musty air,

"You'll have plenty of time to mourn for someone else in a few hours." He forced the boy to turn with a nasty shove, grinning wickedly with a dry voice, "But right now, you should really focus on yourself."

Lean palms yank Kaname upward with a firm grip on his thighs, lengthy, bony fingers pressing into his flesh with unyielding stiffness and strength. His little hips wiggle, and his knees bend, legs kicking and fighting blindly as he forgets the true purpose of his uncle's treatment, and his mouth, open to shriek, is struck dumb with a powerful blow which sends him barrelling into a wall across from them. The man flexes his fingers and marvels at his inability to control himself, vainly thinking he is some Herculean remnant; truly part god and less pureblood, less controlled and more raw glory, when his nephew stands shakily from the debris, holding a crooked jaw. The sinewy flesh wraps anew, encasing his bared mandible and cracking fragments of bone as it seeks the other side of his face. He is too experienced with this pain already, and Rido knows his time is running too low for him to stall more than necessary.

The man's feet tread steadily over the floor, littered with porcelain and glass shards, some small enough that when he walks over them, a small powder kicks up and glitters in the air for a second or two before lodging inside his calves or crackling on the ground. Kaname pushes his shoulder blade back into its rightful place and looks toward the broken window, wondering if fleeing could work. Then, suddenly, in a daze, he crashes forward, seventeen again, into Rido's arms, only they feel broader, rougher, thicker. Almost like Zero's, but not quite as tense. He is taller than his uncle, as he is with Zero, but cannot for the life of him stand up properly, and slurs cuss after cuss as he tries to stabilise himself and kill the man holding him. Before he can, he is flipped around, and his eyes nearly pop out of his head as he feels fingers like trunks pry apart his cheeks, rougher and smelling of gunpowder.

"Stop it,"

He slurs forcefully, his decisive mind abandoning him as it short-circuits every couple of seconds and confuses Zero for Rido, and vice-versa. Warm, sticky flesh, drying quickly, pauses between his legs and travels up, slithering down the base of his penis, over his testicles, dragging leisurely in the gap between them and his anus before gliding between his buttocks. Teasingly, the man slowly grinds against him, seeming hesitant to enter for a change. He looks back and watches the heterochromatic demon, whose concentration defeats his smug smile. When Kaname attempts to bury his face in the pillow and wait out the inevitable (he can already feel the bastard gearing up to enter) his chin rests on gentle fingers, and he freezes as they delicately lift his face, and the hunter stares down at him, close, naked, eyes soft but determined. Having nearly forgotten the man behind him as he slowly lifts his hand to touch the boy's face, he receives a swift strike to his back before his arms are hastily gathered up and held vehemently behind him. Then, his uncle leans back and clumsily holds his buttocks apart with a free hand, pushing in aggressively. He immediately arches, and he is a child again, face wet with tears and mucus, gripping the pillow as hard as he can as the man starts thrusting more deeply, growing greedy and getting up on his haunches behind him. Kaname is terrified and grunts through his chokes and cries as the rhythm changes, always striking him hard, painfully. Every now and then, the angle or the speed changes, and he sobs more loudly, face red and knotted, until it finally becomes too intense, too dolorous, and he cannot help but scream.

Kind fingers again carry his chin upward, and he stares, eyes clogged by tears, at his naked father, whom he can somehow feel is still Zero. His father looks straight through him and wraps his arms around his huddled, miniscule body, embracing him as he remains planted on Rido's lap, getting perpetually fucked and embraced simultaneously. His father's arms are warm, bare, and then Rido is gone. He is nineteen, now, and much larger than the man holding him. He holds him back, and the body seems delicate, frail. He fears if he pulls away to look at this fragile man, the movements could shatter him, as if his dear father had become ashes again. Unbridled, thoughtless, he pushes forward, little by little, hoping to get him on his back so that he may look, and soon rests on top of him. As he withdraws carefully, the sight is traumatising, but mesmerising.

It is his father, and there is no trace of Zero, as if the boy had never existed. Those warm arms slip away from his back and land defensively on either side of a skinny chest. Kaname sees his father try to rise, and shrinks back, terrified by the image of Haruka, the great peacemaker, made so brittle and translucent. His father attempts to scramble back for fear of his son, not seeming to recognise him, (which may hurt the most) and appearing greatly pained. He holds his stomach and grits his teeth, throwing his head back as he continues to push himself further away. Kaname gets a better look at the rest of him, skin looking ghostly, as if drained of all blood. At the thought, he looks up again and sees a large gash in that white neck, which the man tries to stop up with his hand, every second boring into him with the most contemptuous, distrustful glare. The pain in his midsection finally conquers him, and he nearly collapses, arching his back and trying to screech, but too pained to let out more than strangled, tense sounds. His eyes and mouth are open wide, fingers dodging around, grabbing the bed, then his skin, the gash. As his legs fling about, his son catches a glimpse of the state he's in.

Kaname's mind freezes.

His father is... ravaged. Bloodied. Ripped, torn, _mutilated_, and inarguably _drenched_ in others' semen.

Rido and Zero had his father as they had he.

The room seems to disappear; he stands, older, a man of about twenty-two, staring at his clothed father, who is held by Rido. The elder sibling keeps his brother's hips close, captive, Haruka looking shell-shocked and blanched. Rido laves his throat and bites down, and by then he starts to fight back. His claws come out, long and curved, but the other man says something as they separate. He stops for a moment, caught off guard. Then he looks angry. Shouting, he takes an offensive stance, infuriated, neck still bleeding.

Kaname is him. He is standing in a conference room, holding his neck, staring down Zero. The furniture is destroyed and somebody bangs on the door, but he keeps shouting. The hunter is taken aback, unaware of how to react. The pureblood's neck is on fire and gunshots line the walls. Empty gun magazines lay near the shattered table, a crowd growing in the foyer, and suddenly, he runs out of things to say. Aidou's yelling in the hall and Kain's hastily-delivered blows upon the door seem to wake him from a stupor.

In front of him is the hunter, trying to calm him down and speak through a wound in his cheek; it's difficult to assess how large it is through the blood flow and the fidgeting hand protecting it. Kaname's head hurts, then shifts to a tightening in his stomach. He inspects it, running his fingers down his side and finding multiple bullet wounds. They begin burning inside of him, feeling like a great pack of hellhounds tearing at his flesh from behind layers of convulsing muscle and snapping tendons, begging to get out and savagely consume the rest of him. Paling, he irrationally fears they might gnaw their way out of his chest cavity and go galloping after _his girl_. Then Zero's hands are on his shoulders, shaking him. He looks up to find a large, angry gash. Flesh hangs from the hunter's jaw and the brunette's mouth goes dry as he watches teeth clack while the red-eyed boy offers stale apologetic epithets in order to calm him. The bullets continue to fizzle, and his vision grows white. A brief, loud ringing greets him as he slumps into his junior's panicking arms, which struggle to muster the strength to yank him back up before he finally collapses, dragging the boy down with him.

-

There was darkness as he 'woke' from the hallucination with the lingering feeling of fire in his belly, and he wondered frightfully if he could ever be well again. He feared he might become used to this indignation for Yuki's sake: that she would always be asking for more of Zero, and he should therefore sacrifice more of himself for that bastard. He feared that before he could stop this, he might become so accustomed to giving himself to the boy that he would require it, end up craving it and essentially become his intended's whore. The hallucinations weren't done with him, and he felt the simulated soreness, alongside a cold dampness, all over his thighs, back, and stomach. Yuki, his usurer, and Zero and Rido, plunderers of his youth and life, seemed to conspire against whatever he tried to establish for himself.

Abruptly, there was truly nothing but darkness, and a chill which poured down from the window, circling his body indifferently. He'd fallen to the floor, and saw moonlight confined to a thin streak, felt the thick carpet warm his piqued neck. Ringing perforated his ear drums and blasted through his head before settling into a dull, grainy din. He looked around cautiously for a moment, prey-like, before he realised how stupid he was being, and surrendered for a few hours to the silence and emptiness.

And thus, uninterrupted, he slept without fits until the day class bell rung throughout the campus with the absolution of his hand-carved fate.


	14. Catharsis Paradox

Okay, so, for about a month, now, I've been debating with myself the right way to go about this scene. Which pisses me off, because it means I'm second-guessing myself and I wasted too much time on the "not the finale/end/owarino chapter".

So the outcome, regrettably, illustrates this internal conflict. (I very deeply want to hurt Kaname in almost any available way, but hurting Yuki is almost out of the question, and I'll only tentatively bring Zero out from the "Dark Side") In conclusion, I'm happy with it because it's basically what I wanted, but angry for the same reason. Some part of me just had have pity again... have to stop that... on top of that, it's rather short... ugh.

お楽しみください。S'il vous plaît profiter. Por favor, aproveite. Bitte genießen. Si prega di godere... Please enjoy.

* * *

Pain flared up again in the brunette's gut, and he sagged over the dash. Then, the hunter gently pushed him back into his seat, startling him out of a pleasant daze as he reached for the glove box. A wallet and car manual fell out, the light coming on shortly thereafter,

"Shit," he muttered, not bothering with them as he searched. When he came away, he held the notes on their target, scrawled lazily in a little brown book. Kaname winced as he bent over to retrieve the wallet. The leather was well-worn and ripped here and there. The stuffing was stained a rusty brown in some places, and he wondered if his friend had nearly lost it in a scuffle. Noticing the man in question was quite enrapt in the notes, thumbing through with a dogged expression whilst greedily inhaling, he opened the flap and looked at the cards, how much money the man kept on him, and came upon the picture packet. Empty, it stood stark and ghostly in a place which clearly had many memories engraved on the surface. Pulling out cards to look at them, he spied one from a hotel, then another, and another.

"… Do you keep all hotel receipts on you?" Astonished, he saw they went back at least nine months, if not a year. He hadn't realized they'd been so many places. By the time he looked up, Zero was watching him in amusement, fingers lightly holding the cigarette as he took a last drag, long and deep. He exhaled,

"I find they make good reminders of what I'm here for."

"Hunting or continental breakfasts?" The man stared at him unsurely, a wizened smile on his face. Had Kaname truly just made a joke? The pause was lengthy but fruitful,

"I don't typically eat breakfast," he jerked the seat back and laid down with a grunt, "you should know that by now." The pureblood grunted in reply. He saw cards for beach hotels and numbers for scummy holes-in-the-wall, torn pieces of paper with numbers yanked hurriedly across them. One stood out, and he froze, nearly dropping his cigarette on the leather. The wind had seemed quite light, but now buffeted his ears. It drowned him until he spoke, voice shockingly clear to him,

"You kept Aidou's phone number?" The hunter didn't speak for a moment, making that drag last as long as he could before he entered the danger of choking, and exhaled with a

"Yeah. Ichijou's and Kain's, too. What of it?"

"Theirs aren't in here." Kaname clutched the wallet in one hand and placed the other on the driver's door, looming over the hunter with a shell-shocked look and heaven at his back,

"**Zero**," he said, deep voice solid and imposing, "**what did you do to Aidou**?"

The man looked directly up at him, still smoking, unfazed. His eyes, normally alight with insult or gentleness grew dead. He was on lock-down. Softly, and to Kaname, derisively, he said,

"Absolutely nothing." Bile rose in the pureblood's throat and his fingers dented the door. He grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and dragged him up to punch him, but crumpled in pain when the bastard touched his abdomen just lightly and held him as he gasped, tone somehow serene. The pureblood felt as if something was about to claw its way through chest case and out his eyes.

"Kaname, breathe."

The pain was immense. He was going to die, surely. It crept up to his heart and quickly spun around it, constricting it, piercing it. Was this how Shizuka had felt? The hand gripping the wallet loosened and went for the man embracing him, instead. His face became wet with sweat and he panted, fingers nervously latching and releasing the soiled tank top, groaning and twisted, shrinking into a ball.

"Di... Did you do this?" He asked, voice intimidating as a moth, now.

"No, Kaname." The man didn't listen to him, beginning to panic and fidget more aggressively. He held onto him, wondering how far it could go. He looked up at the brilliant desert night sky and savoured that whimper, damaged ears so attuned to it. Smiling, he spotted an arm of the Milky Way. What would be the outcome of this particular plan, he wondered without panic. He held the skittish body tighter,

"Did you po... poison me? Did you put a bind on me?" He should have realised sooner that his zeal for making the poor smart bastard miserable might kill him one day.

"Did you do the same to Aidou? Was it a cover-up?!" The hands began to grow claws, and the stars mesmerised him. His flesh was pierced as the man grew rambunctious, animal. As he looked up, something began to hit him in small waves. They grew and he slowly smiled broader and broader. The sky assured him that everything should be alright; that all he'd worked toward in his life would finally be awarded to him. He caught from the corner of his vision the brunette slowly going into his defence-mode, a ballistic, red-eyed beast with murder written on his mouth. Kaname could not see the brilliance and beauty of his plot, unfurling cosmically for them. His grief was driving him mad. Zero looked up as far as his neck could bend, ears finally dropping that celestial voice as it turned into a growl, and the wind played over his face coolly, comfortingly.

He finally saw it, there, cradled in the arm of the Milky Way, vast and beautiful, endless and eternal, and his smile disappeared. A feeling of very base, very primitive evil overtook him, its vile reptilian nature trying to coax out of him what it wanted. But he felt desolate of emotion, even the rage and joy of revenge he'd gotten from Kaname. No matter how much that petty evil inside of him tried to justify his doings, he felt he'd wronged everyone. Particularly Yuki. How could he have taken her for granted? How could he have gone behind her back and stolen from her such a vital comfort? Every plan he'd made to hurt gave way to a new guilt pulsing through him, filling up every cave and dark, jaded little nook inside of him. His blood rushed through his veins and then flowed generously from him. Heaven looked so beautiful, so unreal and forever. All colours of the cosmos splashed across an infinite black canvas. His heart was ready to burst with what he felt for Yuki, and more deeply, his brother. Never had he felt such self-disgust and, as he imagined all of them while Kaname began to rip through him, peace.

He kept his eyes open as long as he could, back straight as he held himself against the claws and fangs tearing him down to Hell where he belonged.

With his life as compensation, let his plan be fulfilled, but let Yuki remain happy.

-

When Kaname woke up, he was naked. He pushed his hands into the rocky sand and gripped his head, body sticky and crusted all over. The night had turned cold and he stood, tipsy. The scent of blood invaded him, but he was sound, unaffected by it. He felt normal for once and replete, vindicated of the emptiness and worry. He felt fine. The smell was Zero's, though, and he was covered in it. He looked around, but couldn't see the car. Had they fought? Had he injured him and run off? His memory was gone. He began panicking wholeheartedly, focused and purposeful. What in Hell had he done to Zero?

He tried to catch the sound of that strong heart, beating along the breeze like a faint war drum, but it was only him and the brush swaying in the night. Trepid, his limbs shook and he tried to call out, but his shouts were swallowed by his agony as something erupted inside of him. He fell to the ground and held his belly, hot and pained, fingers trembling as he threw his head back and wailed. Oh, God, what had he done?! He prayed through his suffering that the hunter had managed to fend him off and flee. That he was alive. Then, he scented more blood on the breeze, saturating it with fading warmth and the aftermath of malicious intent.

He pushed one foot down, curled and sticky in the sand. He screamed. Had he bathed in Zero's blood or just made rain of it? The other slowly stood him up and he arose, the tight knot inside of him snapping in places. He tried to walk, and faltered with each step in unreal pain. So he ran.

He bolted and manoeuvred around bushes and scrap, feet hitting the ground in longer and longer intervals. The pain inside of him grew astronomically, until he felt it ripple bursts throughout him. The freezing air bit him through the wetness, encouraging the adrenaline. He flew across the desert, a falcon with purpose, until he saw the rest stop, and ran faster, over a dune... and saw the car and the ground around it. He walked, now, steps halting in disbelief but urged by curiosity and horror. The blood beneath his fingernails squelched as he made fists, mortifying him. Zero's body was gone. Blood was splattered everywhere, thicker than normal. Dehydrated. Unhealthy. The blood of a dying man who drank, smoke, fought cannibals and monsters and still had the energy to hit a brothel before coming back and visiting his personal 'call boy'.

Kaname walked up to the car, almost tripping over a seat he must've torn out earlier. He looked on his disbelief, touching the door where he'd bent the metal in fury, seeing a shred of a pair of pants paper-machéd to the dash, a boot tucked down by the gas pedal, laces caught up in it.

He had completely consumed Zero. Down to the bone and marrow. He brought a hand to his mouth to stifle a heave, but stood almost motionless. Gripping the door harder, bending it, his hand was pierced by a bone shard. He inspected it and plucked it out, recognising it immediately as being A: a fraction of a metacarpal and B: indeed, Zero's. It burned his hand, buried slightly in his palm. He pushed it in a little deeper, but his skin tried to push it back out. He wanted it to stay in. He wanted for the sake of his sanity that some piece of the man remain tangible. He wanted an illusion that everything might be okay, that somehow he'd only torn off an arm, and that he'd find and rescue the crippled bastard somewhere out in the desert, resuscitate him, and haul him back home, keep him locked away so that he couldn't be hurt worse. His hand kept rejecting the bone shard, so he swallowed it, almost instantly vomiting because he knew the taste and it made him feel so _fresh_. So _free_ of all that had held him down or taunted him.

He got on his knees and rested his head on the door, a part of him wanting to die, a part of him wondering if there were any more 'leftovers', and a rather unstable negotiation between the two wanting to lick up every last drop of blood and keep Zero with him forever.

He didn't breathe until morning, hoping he might die quickly enough, but the brightness of the sun made him gasp, and he had no choice but to get up and find a phone. How the Hell could he tell Yuki about this?


	15. Taffy

So, um, yeah. Surprise! Zero is, uh, dead... yeah. {rambling} Anyway,

**THIS PART IS GENUINELY SOMEWHAT IMPORTANT (or whatever...**)**:**

It is partly in the power of the reader, for any author, to decide what shall be written next. Now, I have several brews which have been cooling for a while, and I was wondering which one the small lot of you would like for me to continue. Unfortunately, _As a Note_ is quite dead. I've thought numerous times that I should simply delete it, but I have no intention of continuing it unless I could get help in thoroughly editing and weeding it.

**THE CHOICES THUS FAR INCLUDE** a continuation of _At Last_, a continuation of _Menoetius_, a T or M fic containing Hanabusa and Kaname, an M fic containing Ichiou, Takuma, and Kaname, a T or M fic containing Zero, Kaname, and possibly Yuki, (there could be het) a T or M fic containing Haruka, Rido, their father, and possibly Kaname, an M fic containing Yuki and another female character, or an M fic containing Kaname, a mystery character, and possibly Chairman Cross, Rido, or Zero (whichever).

* * *

There is a candy shop just beyond the city limits of a town buried in the eastern mountains. Its back faces a large river, which annually clogs with ice during wintertime, black water shallower and colder than it appears. There are two rooms, and a small sleeping annex which is never locked. In one room is taffy: from ceiling to floor, lined like an army are flavours exotic and domestic, all colours faded, wrappers crinkled and covered in dust. In the second room is the fudge and liquorice. Thousands upon thousands of flavours, blocks, sticks, crumbles, chocolate, peanut butter, mint, coffee, raspberry, orange curaçao; all are neatly stocked and awaiting custom from under a dusty sheath.

The owner is a neatly-trimmed man of good nature, clothes worn and patched, but clean and pressed. His goatee is splotched with white and his skin sags morbidly, but he is otherwise healthy. He has dry straits in which he might receive one or two customers a day, and he fondly instructs them on how he makes the fudge, and how he stretches the taffy, and how his children and their children loved this or that flavour when they were truly children. But these people do not generally care, and he accepts his fate as he hobbles back to his chair and tends to the register, which is battered but, like himself, modest and well-loved.

But here, the shop is new, and the man is young, fit, newly married, barely dreaming of old age. His customers are plentiful and his friends love him dearly. His parents are alive and his father fixes up the taffy stretcher when it breaks. A young man walks into the fudge room and looks around for a while. The owner smiles and asks him what he would like, children stuffing their faces and trotting out happy, messy. The young man looks up at him, and he stops talking.

"My lover likes white chocolate and raspberry. Do you have anything like that?"

The owner tries to speak normally, but he becomes slow and moves rigidly, broken like the candy machines sitting in the storage annex. He points to one of the lower shelves and squats, barely able to take his eyes from the young Adonis, whose voice stunned and enchanted him. He would stand there for an eternity if this creature would only speak to him again. Struggling to sum up the courage to tell the lad the bio behind the candies, he halts again, watching as the brunette leans over, long legs thin beneath brown corduroy. Grimacing when he still cannot reach what he seeks, he gets down on a knee, and then another, and the owner wonders why he would do such a thing for not even a second before standing and looking down.

There, on its knees beneath him, is the closest thing to an angel he will ever meet, and he suddenly feels the demonic desire to entrap it. He is a religious man, so later, he will repent for such thoughts, but at this moment, he feels an immortal energy; a masculine desire; the obscene jealousy of the very pit of man's disreputable being overcome him, and he rages all in that second over the fate of their parting. He wants, more badly than he wants to be rich or happy, to ensnare this young man, and keep that pretty face and that voice like cashmere. He would kill to own this being.

The lad suddenly gets up on one knee, and then another, and the owner sees change shuffling around in a perfect hand: the boy had dropped coins beneath the shelf.

He brushes a long chunk of chocolate hair behind his ear and counts to the last penny,

"I think this should cover it." He smiles, and the owner's desire for him is voracious, "It looks delicious, by the way." Those white teeth, pointed, strange eyes piercing and beautiful, skin like milk; "Thank you, really." Nothing should be so seductive. The owner wonders maliciously if the lad intentionally walked around an advertisement for vice and debauchery, or if he was an unsoiled, clueless beauty. The latter stimulates him to no end, and throughout their conversation he's been formulating ways in which he might lure the boy into the annex and tie him to the bed frame. Nobody in town cares for the wandering type, so who should be concerned if another drifter disappeared? As he hesitantly reaches out, mouth slightly open and eyes lidded wickedly, the bell on the door jingles, and the young man turns around. His demeanour changes, and he is not cold, but surprised. The warmth does not vanish, but the shop owner is bereft of it for this stranger has taken it from him. He would kill for this man.

That smile flashed, trying very hard to be critical. The shop owner thought for a moment, why should an angel need to lie?

"I didn't think you'd find the place." The stranger fights with his heavy muffler, cussing beneath the wool until the young man has had enough, and so goes to help. He takes it away and holds it whilst the stranger gets himself in order and spits out some words between warming his hands and staring down the very air before turning to the brunette and looking at him uncomfortably. The lad in corduroy realises he has held it for too long, subconsciously rubbed it between his soft, elegant fingertips, and so returns it with another grimace, hands delicate as if nervous or reluctant to touch the other male's hands. The stranger eyes him warily, posture guarded and tense, hunched, even, face cold and red,

"I was busy. Got in late last night," he looks around and eyes the shopkeeper sternly before going back to the beautiful man, "I had a rough time." The brunette looks surprised,

"But you had enough equipment?" The stranger, blue jean legs shuffling, shakes his head firmly, lips pursed,

"The jeep veered off. Couldn't get it going again, so we had to go into town." The beautiful lad stops him and looks down at his shirt, which peeks out from a numbed, wind-burnt chest. Blood soaked, it matches nearly perfectly his reddened skin. The lad turns to the owner, who dumbly points out the backroom door. The jean-clad man looks dangerous, but very handsome, different from the slenderness of the taller lad. He winces as they walk to the toilet, steps inside, and begins stripping without looking back. His shirt is ripped and saturated, and then the brunette closes the door with a gentle _click_.

-

Zero tore off his jacket and shivered intensely. Kaname ran the water hot and tried to take off the shirt, but the man swatted him away and nearly shouted as he slowly lifted his arms, face contorted in pain, chest heaving as he pulled it over his head. The window above the toilet was small, but allowed in freezing air, and he stared up at it vengefully as his partner tried to rinse the blood out of the shirt and tend to his wounds. As he wrung the cloth, he spoke quietly,

"So they made a mess of you. Why the Hell did you let them?"

"No fucking weapons. Why'd you have to get a jeep with a bum axel?" he gripped the sill and broke through the plaster, not daring to breathe as his friend cleansed the wounds and tried to scent out poisons. He worked with incredible focus, concernedly prodding each and every bruise, gash, cut, scrape, and scratch.

"Did this all happen in town?"

Zero whirled on him and pushed him over the toilet, hoisting up his thighs and letting blood drench the soft fabric. One hand was behind his back, the other practically bolted to the bowl of the sink. He bent his neck, waiting, but shivered when the hunter's icy face nuzzled harshly into his chest. The man was frozen, knuckles white and holding him so hard, he thought his wrists might break.

"**I am never doing that again**." The brunette couldn't see him well from the angle his body was at, yet caught the uneasy shifts and clumsy brutality. If anything, the hunter's discomfort surprised him, rather than evoked sympathy.

"Why, pray tell?" His voice was clear and the wind outside was silent, so that his unintentionally tender tone might have rung out through the evergreens and bracken. The other male didn't make to move, yet when the brunette tried to come down, he was pressed tighter to the wall, a cold body clamped down around him. He didn't know how to give comfort at such a time; only with Yuki had he betrayed his usually distant and cordial temperament. He tilted his head up as far as it could go, and Zero pressed a little harder, hurting him, causing him to close his eyes and simply sigh,

"I can't help you with anything mental. Either you take a drink or we're done." His firmness shocked him, and his partner stilled against him. Just as he had reached that superb feeling of triumph, the other man looked up at him, and he was desolate. He became pity, itself, and feared that he might fumble his words. He hadn't seen the hunter like that in his life, other than a time or two during the Rido days. But back then, the boy had Yuki to vent to. What could he do to help him?

The man looked up at him, eyes red from bloodlust, but also bloodshot. His pale lips quivered and he breathed deeply, shakily. Even his breaths were chilled.

The older male was alarmed,

"Zero, drink."

And the man buried his head in his partner's chest again, came away, hesitated, replaced himself, and came away again. Kaname's eyes widened as his hands were suddenly in front of him, still held tightly by the hunter's. Teeth punctured his neck and he didn't jolt or frown. His body remained suspended, but he slipped suggestively lower, until he was nested securely in his friend's taut lap. The man's broad body loomed over him like a beastly monolith, but shook and embraced him desperately. When he began to feel light-headed, he noticed the grip on his hands had loosened, and when he attempted to clear his throat to say, 'stop', the man instead removed himself, and went for his lips. The glow in those red eyes had reversed so quickly, the transition from red to blue left a lingering and frightening image in Kaname's mind, and he felt as those hips starting to piston against him, those hands, one undoing his trousers, the other holding up his thigh, all turned into something utterly fierce and all-too recognisable. If he was weak enough, he would surely black out and see those taunting eyes.

Zero only pulled the corduroy down enough for access, and awkwardly shoved Kaname against the wall and rotated him, unbuttoning himself and smashing that pretty forehead into cream paint.

"You are not going dry." The brunette said as the man continued to keep his hands locked in front of him. The hunter's voice trembled. They felt terrible.

"**You want to use blood again**?" The shaky bastard said darkly. Only God knew why he wanted to have more pain on his mind. When the brunette had to hold in a shriek, blustering breaths carrying curses and cuss after cuss from his throat, he let up a little, and entered more slowly, the tip of his phallus having a rough time getting in. It hurt like Hell for both of them to go dry, and the clenching and stomping weren't helping either. About a third of the way in, Kaname fell a bit, balanced again against the other male's thighs, wiggling and starting every now and then. A large puff of air came out in a string of words,

"Why can't you just go fuck a dog?!"

"Dogs prefer to bite. So do I, apparently. Can't mix such similar personalities." Having eloquence and sarcasm halfway to an orgasm doesn't quite make for the most erotic mood, and Kaname stomped again to avoid shouting. Halfway in. Only halfway in. The tile above the toilet was cold on his face, and the window wasn't helping. He closed his eyes for a moment and it was as if a light clicked on, for he saw himself there, in the darkness, and felt simultaneously that horrible figure behind him; clawing him; fucking him; riding him raw. He opened them again and found the vision gone, but feared it would reappear if he dared black out again, and so he tried to stay as stagnant and firm as possible.

Didn't work out very well.

"Fuck," he muttered, scalp now adjacent to the wall but always moving and seeking some semblance of enjoyment in their coupling. Pleasure? Who'd heard of it?

The heat of Zero's thighs pressing up against him was the most comfortable thing he could find in their situation. He wrapped his arms behind him and grasped the hunter's sides, anxiously lightening and strengthening his grip, unsettled and unsure of what to do. When at last Zero was buried so deeply inside of him that he felt the man's sac trying to glide in, too, he choked again, something not entirely incomprehensible: an uneasy sound which forced him to cover his mouth. Both stalled. His vulnerability had overwhelmed them. Hesitantly, the hunter's hands touched his hips, and then gripped them. A sweating body pressed down upon his clothed, hunched back, and his eyes widened. His fingers hovered just beyond his mouth, open and trembling. When a forehead rested on his shoulder blade, he snarled and tried to regain some control,

"If the extra touching isn't necessary,"

Zero blinked, and withdrew with an affronted, uncomfortable look in his eyes. He grew defensive, and posed a tiny thrust, which caused the pureblood to hit the wall.

"I thought these _were_ the 'extra touches'?"

The brunette felt relief flood his veins, and curled his fingertips into his palms, fists steady against the tiling as the old spark was rejuvenated.

"If you want to know what it feels like, be my guest. It's troubling to know the man who tastes like poison is the one you can't keep your fingers off of." His heart wasn't weighted with these words; there was nothing strange about their antagonism toward each other. It was a far-fetched idea that there'd come a day when they'd be too tired to fight, or worse no longer feel the same desire.

Zero growled and thrust in harshly, thin hip bones like iron spikes, agile and painful. His claws dug into the other male's skin, and their souls chorused their pleasure with Hellish pangs. Kaname grunted and swore, struggling to keep his eyes open and his voice down. He heard the door open and a few excited voices from beyond the washroom and the sound of their shuffling clothing. If he got caught by some sweet little girl with this damned, battered fool buried balls-deep in him in the back of a bloody _confectionary_, he might just crack. To take his mind off the thought, he tried to reposition himself into a pose easier to hide their motive. But when he did, something strange happened. The hunter closed around him, arms coming away from guarding his splayed fingers to enwrap his chest. Hands cold as the glaciers in the pass crept purposefully up his shirt and held him tightly. He craned his neck up and back only to see the man distractedly lay his head on his back. The light hair tickled Kaname's neck, sending a few twitches to his face. The hands began to stroke him gingerly, unyielding and unwilling to let go as iron, but handling him as carefully as they numbly could. It was as if the man feared letting him go, which in turn made him fear what could have shaken him to such a point that he might turn to a 'frenemy' for comfort. He felt like asking why, but he was just starting to get hard, and emotions and deep thinking had no place in sex between them.

The thrusts came a bit deeper now; harder, more sudden. Pulling out halfway as leisurely as possible, and them slamming back in. Kaname felt the blood trickle down his legs, and shifted as his cock hit the rather rough boundary corduroy. Zero didn't want him to move, so he yanked it out swiftly and toyed with it for a bit, unsound on the idea of double-pleasuring the man, but feeling some necessity to do so. Tentatively, he began stroking, thrusts becoming sloppier as he multitasked. Becoming harder, they jolted the brunette into the wall, causing him to whisper a small "Fuck all," at the pain of hitting his head. He panted lightly, stifling his breath with terse lips before gasping for air, head turning up a little more, expression softening and losing its gnarled complexity. He touched the hunter's side and massaged him with soft fingers. Opening his eyes, the younger man suddenly gained what he needed to finish, and a deep, concentrated frown buried into his face.

In an attempt to distance himself from both his vulnerability and the man he was holding, he strengthened his posture. Gripping the back of the other man's head with a nasty snarl, he shoved it downward, forcing it to the tank lid of the toilet, grinding that pretty face into the porcelain with a series of animalistic thrusts. He heard a few small grunts escape the man below him, and when he looked down, met those lust-laden eyes, watery and hot. They beseeched him wantonly, but that sarcastic mouth ruined the moment,

"It's already dry, for God's sake, must you do it roughly, too?"

He responded by striking harder, pushing down the corduroy and getting a firm grip on the man's hips. The grunts turned into cries, but still those eyes bore into him. Now, he thrust so quickly he had to reach a hand out to the wall. They closed a bit, tearing up tiredly and painfully, still swirling with smoky, uninhibited lust. It is worth noting that, at the time, Kaname didn't realise what it meant when he brought his hands back and pried himself open a little further, or at least, he didn't think about it. About how much more noise he made, now that Zero could venture deeper greedily inside of him, or the profound and startling effect it had on the man in question. He didn't concern himself with any of these things until his voice went up just a few decibels as he cried out anxiously between the toilet and his comrade like a cat in heat, and the hunter's icy hand, which had zealously forced his face into the porcelain, gingerly laid over his own more lustful one with tender intent. His eyes closed fully at that point as he was opened up further, one hand being dragged down to feel what was plunging urgently inside of him. As the usual post-coitus humiliation began to creep into his mind, he came quite suddenly, grunting with a wet face, hands struggling to make sure the semen couldn't hit the corduroy. But Zero held them where they were, and stopped moving inside of him.

Orgasm intensified by the humiliation of being watched with such rapture, Kaname briefly thought of killing the man for bearing witness to something so intimate. When he finished, he was watched a little longer, and grew angry as post-orgasmic twitches overcame his body. As they peaked, the thrusting began again, this time with little rhythm. The purpose was simple and inelegant: "Come inside as fast as possible before Kaname can push me off, and then gloat about how I get to fuck the unholy king of the vampires whenever I please while the smartass tries desperately and fruitlessly to clean my jizz out of his asshole." Or so Kaname liked to imagine. Zero's true thoughts were much, much simpler, primitive. He thrust as fast as before and began making small sounds, uncharacteristic for him to do anything but breathe. When he was about to climax, he pulled out and came with a shudder, still holding the pureblood's bruised and trembling hips before collapsing against and sliding down a water heater to the floor.

The brunette regained strength and stood up in disbelief, turning around,

_You actually had the decency to not come inside,_ he thought of saying, but the dark intensity of Zero's stare stopped him from saying it. The younger man panted unhealthily, wincing as his chest stretched his bleeding wounds and Kaname realised his back was soaked in the poor bastard's blood. He'd honestly and with great labour given him all he'd had. And then had the politesse come climax to consider his partner's comfort. Kaname couldn't deal with that. And he was thankful when he refocused on the crumpled mercenary to find a demonic smile, curled and unfounded, eyes angling toward the pants around his ankles. Looking down, the pureblood swore out loud enough for the world to hear, music to the hunter's ears, who closed his eyes and panted out his pain.

So his aim had been a little more devious. Coming on the corduroy wasn't as bad as inside his partner's belly, right?

* * *

... Seriously, have any of you tried to get jizz out of corduroy, before? It's Hell. My advice to Kaname is to throw the pants away...

Shameless filler... how I adore thee...


	16. The Last Annexation

It was almost comical, because here he had always loved the feeling of Zero inside him as deeply as could be, and now he'd finally gotten what he wanted.

He kept walking at the roadside, bathed in dust and light, barely able to see as he squinted and looked toward the empty, yellow horizon. A labyrinth of dunes, mirages, and abandoned buildings, the desert ached and shifted, ancient and tired of the secrets people carelessly entrusted to it. Waves of sand poured over the hills and sloped over brush, which peeked through the dust futilely as it suffocated. Wherever he looked, he was hopelessly entrapped in the memory (or lack thereof) of Zero's murder. The pain in his gut numbed all other feeling. Trapped inside the desert, and confined to his dismal mind, he wandered a phantom over the rolling, anxious dust, footprints drawn chaotically across the landscape before disappearing in the wind.

Still stunned by the previous evening, he'd run on auto-pilot for the majority of the day. Only when a car came and alerted him had he scrounged up the shame to use one of the many choked bushes to hide his nakedness and the blood and dirt struggling to conceal it. Unyieldingly, he'd thought of Zero's death and how he might have enacted the basest desire he'd had since intermediary school. All he'd done in his entire life had been so obsessively orchestrated. The idea he'd willingly sacrificed his plans—that he had been thrust into a state of no control—meant only that he had wanted to lose it, right? He'd had fantasies about losing control over himself and consequently gaining it over others. He'd often fantasized about busting the hunter's bedroom door off the hinge. Sitting up from his desk, the man would ask with alarm something like, "What the fuck's your problem?" and reach for his gun. Kaname would appear next to him, grab his wrists, and hold them behind his back, pressing their bodies together as he slowly bent him back into the chair and twisted his wrists until they cracked. He'd savour whatever came out of the bastard's mouth, then, and rip a gash in his neck because he'd eventually tire of the screaming. Tossing the choking, gushing mass into the wall, he'd grip that blood soaked wretch's collar and rip him up the wall, give his little spiel on how badly the hunter's presence had stained his very _soul_, and try to convince him that the whole ordeal was his fault. Holding him by his neck, he'd add pressure every second until the eyes turned up and a final, satisfying crack met his eager ears. Then, he'd drop the body and walk out, more fulfilled and drunk off his own success and freedom than ever.

Not since his captivity by Rido and Ichiou had he envisioned such things, though these men certainly deserved it for what they did to him. But he allowed Zero to do to him the same as they had. He permitted the touches and even gotten used to them. He had his moments of regret and mental terror, (mainly when his wife seemed close to discovering the truth, or when he'd walk into Zero's room in **_his_ home** to find the naked man asleep with a woman strung across his chest like a bloody chain of gun rounds).

He would imagine what he felt during the worst of time, but never had he thought of unshackling his raw strength. Unguarded, uncontrolled, he must've been a true fury. There wasn't a _body_. Indecision and confusion ruled him: he was nervous to look at a living thing for fear he might relapse, and deeply feared returning to his wife and explaining to her what had happened, especially when he didn't _know_. He didn't fucking _know_. How could he not? Had he wholly devoured one of the only people he'd trusted in his life? The taste was thick on his tongue and his imagination conjured bone fragments lodged in his throat, eking their way through his skin or down to his dragon belly. He climbed over the sand bank and vomited on all fours.

A thick red and black ooze dripped from his mouth onto the sand. Something shone under a blackish, wet glob. Gazing at it with the entire night weighing on his back he slowly lifted his hand, then hastily, shakily retrieved the smudged white piece. Brushing off the gunk, he thumbed it carefully: a smooth, silvery link. Part of a wristwatch.

He remembered **none** of it.

Not running away from the car, or tearing it apart, or consuming Zero. Not a second. His befuddlement stopped him from making further conclusions, and as he grew tentative about whether or not he was losing his control over his primal nature, he further distanced himself from reality and the people about him. Honestly, for the first few hours, he didn't remember much of the incidents at White Sands (and there were many to be told), same as what had happened at the rest stop. These events paralleled each other as he recalled throughout the rest of his life, until his dying breath, each atrocity and unforgivable action he'd committed. It made him a bit more introspective as he agonised over his lack of self-control, and feared he might lose it again at any moment. Ahead of him lay an almost eternal sentence of self-loathing, distrust, and emotional distress. And Yuki, let God and she forgive him.

Nearing the end of the first day, filthy and parched, he approached a roadside shack with a couple of annexes. He inspected it from afar: the small, slanted compartment attached to the back of the main building promised a generator, and he slowly came alive as he thought of the people inside. Humans, flesh, blood: his stomach churned with revulsion at the thought, but when he brought his hand to his mouth to keep from vomiting, a ravenously extending claw caught his cheek and ripped it. His eyes grew wide and he shook, mouth open, sensing some of his own blood bead on his cheek before the wound closed. His body itched everywhere and his head felt pressured, as if pumped with water. Choking on his breath, he tried to scent out a rabbit or a prairie dog, but the waste was quiet. Pleading with himself to run away, he shook in terror before his own weakness. Looking around, he found no other buildings or cars. The prospect of any food disgusted and excited him; he was repulsed by the thought of eating anything, but starved and wailed inside with gluttony and unfulfilled rage. The scents stimulated him further, causing him to look about wildly, begging for some control and decency, struggling to not fall prey to his own instincts.

But he wanted it. God, did he want it **bad**. And soon he stopped shaking, walking toward the shack and sounds of voices without a tremble or a thought in his head.

* * *

The car was encased in ice. Zero dropped his satchel and cursed,

"Oh, _**fuck**_** me**."

He slammed one fist on the window, pounded it like a roofing nail, and swore again as the ice sheet refused to crack and let him in. Eyeing his pack, he contemplated the pros and cons of simply shooting the window, mainly falling on the conclusions that he'd be nagged straight out of the ninth layer of Hell, but have a hopefully operational getaway car.

The gunfire echoed in the woods, and as his ears readjusted, he caught the sounds of bodies moving through brush and trees. He started panicking, yanked another gun out of his bag, cocked it, busted in the rest of the glass with his elbow, and saw he didn't have the time to crawl in. So he waited. He didn't close his eyes once, breaths steady, deep, and so loud he had to stop breathing if he wanted to hear exactly what was happening. He wiggled his boots, making sure they weren't too deep in the snow to restrict much movement. He could move like a phantom if he needed to, but he was definitely out of his element, trapped in nothing but a white vacuum with three very lonely guns and a possibly bum car.

Then he heard them. His breathing spiked; a deceptive and cleverly cracked branch in one direction, hurried footsteps in the other; baiting him; fuckin' _**ambushing**_ him like wild dogs surrounding a gazelle. Far behind him, beyond the clearing, he sensed one of them moving, and stayed his ground, ready to whip around but knowing what might happen if he did so. He could see the other in the trees about twenty yards ahead of him. A young female (why did it always have to be a girl?) with sandy blonde hair and wicked brown eyes. She watched him soullessly, face stoic yet contorted and twisted with gluttony. Her aura was downright insane, but she, too, was standing her ground. Was she the alpha? He aimed the gun at her experimentally, body angled and ready to turn. The one behind him barrelled toward him with a shriek, and he turned, firing a couple of shots into its chest.

Oh yeah,

She was the alpha.

He woke up standing. His throat and mouth burned and bled, bone fragments listing through tissue like tiny unmanned boats. When he looked up, his eyes watered. Across the walls and ceilings, trailing out the front and back doors were streaks and puddles of blood. Again, he became sick to his stomach, and fell to the ground ready to retch, when he landed on the body of a Latino woman, her long dark hair coiled and wet, soaking in the stream seeping from her throat, if it could still be called a throat. The warmth on his lips and amount of blood everywhere suggested there had been others. He'd woken up just after he' bitten her. He had been sated just after he'd bitten her. White shirt pink and red with blood, she lay bent and strangely angled on the dusty floorboards, eyes bloodshot and a few fingernails missing. A small clatter startled him and he looked down, hands numb and fumbling for what had fallen.

With a shriek, he jumped back, scooting from her body with a ferocious terror. One of the nails had fallen from his hair. She must've tried to fight him when he attacked her; embedded her nails in his skull; tried to run away. His throat burned. He curled up in the corner, thinking of Yuki and Zero and home and Zero's room, Zero's unmade bed, Zero's nonexistent body groaning under the sheets as he would move in to lay beside him.

He wanted to go home.

He pulled his knees to his chest defensively, hands at the back of his head.

He wanted to go home, now.

* * *

The stupid one tumbled toward the car and Zero jumped on the hood, aiming at its head with his left hand and firing a dum-dum into its temple, wincing when the spray flecked his cheeks. A second came at him from his left, and from then on it was carnage. He blasted two or three dum-dums by accident, blowing off limbs and chunks of torso. Two others dashed toward him like real wild dogs, mouths open, all limbs in use, and he blew through them, getting sprayed again and again. The female darted between the two underlings and slammed him into the windshield, cracking it as she checked if her comrades were still alive. As Zero aimed the gun at her, she grabbed the weapon and screamed as he shot her, but managed to get it away from him. She threw it behind her, where it landed upon one of the corpses. Her look was feral, no longer calculating, but her grip was powerful and she tore into his unprotected chest with glee. He got a hold of her, screaming as he threw her off and searched for the third gun. She ran toward him and struck a long gash down his arm. In a swift movement, he flipped her on the ground, pounced her as she shrieked, and **growled** at her. His teeth extended beyond his lips and his back hunched, shutting her up. His growl was low but flocculating. When she made any attempt to move, he bent closer to her, and her hands would stop and uncurl from his bloodied, freezing chest. She stared up at him, threatened, cornered, looking for a way to kill him but finding none. She was too far gone to have her life flash before her eyes. She just kept glaring at him, the hunted beast. So he shot her.

She flopped down, legs twitching and stilling. He licked his teeth and clacked them together so as to lure out others. The cold slowly began to wake him up, though it made him sluggish, and he knocked away the rest of the glass in the broken window of the car, undid the lock, and hopped in. He started it, and the hum reverberated in the thicket, penetrating every burrow and every den. When he'd started out of the clearing, he heard more quick rustling, shifted gears, and hit the gas.

The wheels spun in the snow for a few seconds as the sounds came closer. He whipped out of the clearing and around a curve, hearing a nasty _crack_ as the axle gave in and he flew through a small snow bank. His head bounced off the wheel, disorienting him, and the seatbelt ripped into his chest wounds until his skin folded around it through his tank. The scurrying came closer until he heard footsteps approaching the car. Undoing the belt, he reached blearily for the shotgun on the passenger seat, cocked it, and fired out of the window without a glance.

What a horrible update record. My word, I'm surprised I haven't been lynched. 


	17. The Blue Dunes of the Pleiades

I refuse to feel sheepish. College, Gaelic, romance and wisdom teeth are highly unforgiving. Especially when fueled by midnight viewings of Rocky Horror on the west side with nothing on but a corset and black pleather boots that scuff each other when they clack against the floor of a diner at four a.m. If anything, blame nothing.

* * *

The stupid one tumbled toward the car and Zero jumped on the hood, aiming at its head with his left hand and firing a dum-dum into its temple, wincing when the spray flecked his cheeks. A second came at him from his left, and from then on it was carnage. He blasted two or three dum-dums by accident, blowing off limbs and chunks of torso. Two others dashed toward him like real wild dogs, mouths open, all limbs in use, and he blew through them, sprays of scalded blood and liquefied flesh spurting onto his jacket. The female darted between the two underlings and slammed him into the windshield, cracking it as she checked her comrades for life. As Zero aimed the gun at her, she grabbed the barrel to jerk it away, screamed as he shot her, in the torso, but managed to fling it into the snow, among the corpses. Her look was feral, no longer calculating, her grip powerful as she tore into his unprotected chest with glee. He got a hold of her, screaming as he threw her off and searched for the third gun. She ran toward him and struck a long gash down his arm like a tectonic rift. In a swift movement he tossed her on the ground, pounced as she shrieked and **growled** at her. His teeth extended beyond his lips and his back hunched, shutting her up. The growl was low but fluctuating. When she made any attempt to move, he bent closer to her, and her hands would stop and uncurl from his bloodied, freezing jacket. She stared up at him, threatened, cornered, looking for a way to kill him but finding none, too far gone to have her life flash before her eyes. She just kept glaring at him, the hunted beast. So he shot her.

She flopped down, legs twitching and stilling. He licked his teeth and clacked them together so as to lure out others. The cold slowly began to wake him up, though it made him sluggish, and he knocked away the rest of the glass in the broken window of the car, undid the lock, and hopped in. He started it, and the hum reverberated in the thicket, penetrating every burrow and every den. When he'd started out of the clearing, quick rustling echoed closer and closer in the trees, so he slammed the stick forward, and hit the gas.

The wheels spun in the snow for a few seconds as the sounds came closer. He whipped out of the clearing and around a curve, hearing a nasty _crack_ as the axle gave and he flew through a small snow bank. His head bounced off the wheel, turning the white world all colours, and the seatbelt ripped into wounds until his skin folded around it through his tank. The scurrying came closer and he heard footsteps approaching the car. Undoing the belt, he reached blearily for the shotgun on the passenger seat, cocked it, and fired out of the window with blood running into his eyes.

Kaname wakes in less than a second. The early desert evening spills over a windowsill and creeps toward his toes with admirable persistence. Thin shadows cloak strips of bloodied skin held shaded by metal bars omitting light. He keeps himself as small as possible, huddled in a corner of the storeroom, fingernails digging into white ankles. The bodies in the shop need to be buried, he theorizes vaguely. Dead blood crawls over the linoleum as a fragrant reminder, but nothing, not a thought can enter his head through the dull sheen in his eyes. A small, half-painted shelf stood carefully in the corner captures his full focus. Pupils pinpoints, he wraps his vision around it, invisible optic tendrils, and memorizes every sliver, scuff and chip, raking the wooden frame with intensity so great he can distract himself from picturing the dead girl behind the door.

He looks up, suddenly, at the beam of soft light entering the room and visually combs the lambent dust particles, finding more and more to distract himself, but still, he thinks in the back of his mind, he should really get to digging that hole.

Opening the door is an easy task. He knows what's on the other side; there is nothing to surprise him. He looks down at the girl and the men between the shelves, all soaked in blood, much of it dried, faces cold and eyes caught in infinite terror. He closes them to help himself. Each man is slung over his shoulders two at a time, and he walks them to the back door. Earlier, the light streaming in had been weak and comforting, illuminating the dust and little else. Now it is stark, burns his eyes and makes his skin tingle. A couple of crates are stacked against the faded stucco wall, and gently, he sits them against the rough wood. Perambulating to the centre of the shack, arriving at the girl, he kneels and his arms slowly shove under her, gliding over the blood and slathering it on from the back of her drenched blouse. Curly black hair pours over his pale flesh and he closes her eyes mechanically, drawing her legs together and heaving her up with little effort and great delicacy.

The back door, half-open, glares at him with the glint of the late sun. Her arms are tucked neatly into her lap and her head burrows into his torso with dead affection. It is no coincidence that, for the time he holds her, all he can think of is Yuki, but strangely enough, it is always the girl's face.

He lays her apart from the men he's killed; hunched as if sleeping, body curled gingerly in the dust. He looks away and across the desert, not bothering to blink or squint, allowing the sun to burn his eyes as they heal. Trails of tire marks zigzag between towering white dunes and grassy bramble. Burning quietly on the horizon, the sun casts clouds pink and the sky a bluish haze. Again, his focus is complete. Immobile, prone, he stands stoically before the bodies at the closing act, and the wind pauses in anticipation.

As the sun sinks ever-slowly behind one dune, the largest nearer to him changes, a colour nascent, grey, but the light dips further in retreat and new life emerges from the sand.

Standing much taller than him, the dunes come to life, all shades of blue in the retreating light, and crash against each other as gargantuan waves, rising from the dead landscape to consume each other in violent, looming tides. Diaphanous whitewater sea spray illumined by a fattened red moon hovers over each conflict; blue spires shoot out into long, airless atmospheres. A freezing gust blasts in from nowhere, sweeps past him and leads the spray to splash weakly against the crates before calming, whipping hair across his stoic face and back. As the waves recede to crash, the gust sucks towards them, pulling sand in rivulets toward destruction. Kaname witnesses the brilliant devastation with numbed disbelief. And then, without warning, the wind is silent once more, and the waves stagnant on the plain as they were. Lips trembling for a second, he collects himself and forgets the vision to return to his job. The stars shine clearly and brightly, rising up his naked back as he ponders whether to dig a hole or open a crevice. He blinks and his decision is made for him: a gaping patulous maw gobbles sand like a sinkhole, waiting for him as if it always were. Each body from the crates is delivered to the grave and he covers them liberally, creating a small hill. Now there is only the girl's body.

The pale red moon peeks over his shoulder and calls for him to turn around, and he does. Lying still asleep, or so he imagines, the girl cradles her arms with delicate fingers. He dreams she's dreaming, but he knows nothing about her, so it amounts to nothing. Sand has turned her hair grey without age and gypsum dust speckles her white blouse. It catches the breath he doesn't have. Sparkling, tiny coruscations, each grain reflects the same blue of the desert, the tiny Pleiades, until her torso is nearly illuminated, and a playful breeze shakes the folds of her skirt to stir the light alive. She glimmers in the dark with an eerie half-light, swathed in an infinitely short afterlife conjured by the desert. Each twinkle reflects inverted the night sky, hanging a deepening blue with splashes of the Milky Way purloining darkness from dead beauty. It seems to be that the only way for this to be possible is if she's moving, but she isn't, and he is left to his fears. Yet the moment disappears upon arrival, and he begins a slow walk toward her, careful of his own mind as he bends down to collect her. She hadn't turned, had she? No. She hadn't moved in five hours.

Lifting her seems harder for some reason. She is exceedingly light, but his body defeats him and he remains kneeling with her half-cradled against his bare chest. Her skin is blue with the night and chills as the temperature drops. Nausea overcomes him and he backs away, letting her flop to the ground as he hobbles back and falls to the grave of a dune, shaking, unable to control his limbs as he gathers on all fours and vomits into the sand. His breath becomes ice in the air and the baking desert betrays itself. Sweeping nunatuks with pointed, snowy crowns replace the dunes and the vomit steams as it chills. Parts of it glimmers and he shudders, retching again until his stomach and throat burn with nothing but acid to tickle his tongue. A long, tenacious string of saliva and mucus attaches itself from his lip to the spill like a wet black spider web.

No illusions play over this of his creations; no sparkling bodies of the dead seeming lively again. The blood seeps into the sand without special effect, remaining what it is and shining briefly before soaking in. More gobs and bone shards are left to see among the red, as well as a button and a hard, malformed lump. He hiccups, recoiling to sit on his knees, arms in his lap as the string grows smaller and finally snaps in the middle. He wipes his face only to meet dried blood on his arm and has the forbearance to forgive it and give up. Staring at the lump, he picks it up and feels it.

A bullet. He blanches. When had he eaten a bullet? Had the men fired at his stomach? He'd never seen a holster. Feet digging into the sand, forming an erratic rooster tail, he leaps for the door and breaks it open, tumbling into the outpost to scour for a gun. He tears shelves from the walls, rips the counter from the floor and obliterates every door in search of the phantom gun. Glass crashes to the floor as jars fly down and splatter preserves across bloodied floorboards. The cash register meets the back wall and shatters, coins and bills blossoming like cold fireworks.

No gun.

He runs back out to the girl's body and looks her over, finding nothing. The evaporated pool stares blandly at him from the grave site. Walking forward numbly, he falls down before it, plucks the bullet and holds for several seconds.

His fingers sting.

It was Zero's.

* * *

What's the sound of three hands clapping?


End file.
